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The Crown of 
Wild Olive 



JOHN RUSKIN 



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JOHN RUSKIN 



THE 



CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 



FOUR LECTURES 



Work, Traffic, War 



The Futurb-q^ngland 




JOHN RUSKlNrMS. 

And indeed it should have been of gold, had not Jupiter been so 
poor. — Aristophanes {Flutus) 



PHILADELPHIA 

HENRY ALTEMUS 

1895 






^^^^.i 
A 



Copyrighted 1895, by Henry Altemus. 



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HENRY ALTEMUS, MANUFACTURER, 
PHILADELPHIA. 



INTRODUCTION.* 



Twenty years ago, there was no lovelier piece 
of lowland scenery in South England, nor any 
more pathetic in the world, by its expression of 
sweet human character and life, than that imme- 
diately bordering on the sources of the Wandel, 
and including the low moors of Addington, and 
the villages of Beddington and Carshalton, with 
all their pools and streams. No clearer or diviner 
waters ever sang with constant lips of the hand 
which *'giveth rain from heaven;" no pastures 
ever lightened in springtime with more passionate 
blossoming ; no sweeter homes ever hallowed the 
heart of the passer-by with their pride of peaceful 
gladness — fain-hidden — yet full-confessed. The 
place remains (1870) nearly unchanged in its 
larger features ; but with deliberate mind I say, 
that^I have never seen anything so ghastly in its 
inner tragic meaning, — not in Pisan Maremma, — 

* Called the " preface " in former editions ; it is one of my bad habits 
to put half my books into preface. Of this one, the only prefatory thing 
I have to say is that most of the contents are stated more fully in my 
Other volumes ; but here are put in what, at least, 1 meant to be a more 
popular form, all but this introduction, which was written very carefully 
to be read, not spoken, and the last lecture on the Future of England, 
with which, and the following notes on it, I have taken extreme pains. 

(3) 



4 INTRODUCTION. 

not by Campagna tomb, — not by the sand-isles 
of the Torcellan shore, — as the slow stealing of 
aspects of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over 
the delicate sweetness of that English scene : nor 
is any blasphemy or impiety, any frantic saying 
or godless thought, more appalling to me, using 
the best power of judgment I have to discern its 
sense and scope, than the insolent defiling of those 
springs by the human herds that drink of them. 
Just where the welling of stainless water, trem- 
bling and pure, like a body of light, enters the 
pool of Carshalton, cutting itself a radiant chan- 
nel down to the gravel, through warp of feathery 
weeds, all waving, which it traverses with its deep 
threads of clearness, like the chalcedony in moss- 
agate, starred here and there with white grenouil- 
lette ; just in the very rush and murmur of the first 
spreading currents, the human wretches of the 
place cast their street and house foulness ; heaps 
of dust and slime, and broken shreds of old metal, 
and rags of putrid clothes; which, having neither 
energy to cart away, nor decency enough to dig 
into the ground, they thus shed into the stream, 
to diffuse what venom of it will float and melt, far 
away, in all places where God meant those waters 
to bring joy and health. And, in a little pool, 
behind some houses farther in the village, where 
another spring rises, the shattered stones of the 
well, and of the little fretted channel which was 
long ago built and traced for it by gentler hands, 
lie scattered, each from each, under a ragged bank 
of mortar, and scoria, and bricklayer's refuse, on 
one side, which the clean water nevertheless chas- 



INTRODUCTION. 5 

tises to purity; but it cannot conquer the dead 
earth beyond ; and there, circled and coiled under 
festering scum, the stagnant edge of the pool ef- 
faces itself into a slope of black slime, the accu- 
mulation of indolent years. Half-a-dozen men, 
with one day's work, could cleanse those pools, 
and trim the flowers about their banks, and make 
every breath of summer air above them rich with 
cool balm; and every glittering wave medicinal, 
as if it ran, troubled only of angels, from the porch 
of Bethesda. But that day's work is never given, 
nor, I suppose, will be ; nor will any joy be pos- 
sible to heart of man, for evermore, about those 
wells of English waters. 

When I last left them, I walked up slowly 
through the back streets of Croydon, from the old 
church to the hospital ; and, just on the left, be- 
fore coming up to the crossing of the High Street, 
there was a new public-house built. And the 
front of it was built in so wise manner, that a re- 
cess of two feet was left below its front windows, 
between them and the street-pavement ; a recess 
too narrow for any possible use (for even if it had 
been occupied by a seat, as in old time it might 
hav6 been, everybody walking along the street 
would have fallen over the legs of the reposing 
wayfarer). But, by way of making this two feet 
depth of freehold land more expressive of the dig- 
nity of an establishment for the sale of spirituous 
liquors, it was fenced from the pavement by an 
imposing iron railing, having four or five spear- 
heads to the yard of it, and six feet high ; con- 
taining as much iron and iron-work, indeed, as 



6 INTRODUCTION. 

could well be put into the space ; and by this 
stately arrangement, the little piece of dead 
ground within, between wall and street, became a 
protective receptacle of refuse ; cigar ends, and 
oyster shells, and the like, such as an open-handed 
English street-populace habitually scatters ; and 
was thus left, unsweepable by any ordinary 
methods. Now the iron bars which, uselessly (or 
in great degree worse than uselessly), enclosed this 
bit of ground, and made it pestilent, represented a 
quantity of work which would have cleansed the 
Carshalton pools three times over : of work, partly 
cramped and perilous, in the mine ; partly griev- 
ous and horrible, at the furnace ; partly foolish 
and sedentary, of ill-taught students making bad 
designs : work from the beginning to the last 
fruits of it, and in all the branches of it, venom- 
ous, deathful,* and miserable. 

Now, how did it come to pass that this work 
was done instead of the other ; that the strength 
and life of the English operative were spent in 

* A fearful occurrence took place a few days since, near Wolverhamp- 
ton. Thomas Snape, aged nineteen, was on duty as the "keeper" of 
a blast furnace at Deepfield, assisted by John Gardner, aged eighteen, 
and Joseph Swift, aged thirty-seven. The furnace contained four tons 
of molten iron, and an equal amount of cinders, and ought to have been 
run out at 7.30 p. M. But Snape and his mates, engaged in talking and 
drinking, neglected their duty, and, in the meantime, the iron rose in 
the furnace until it reached a pipe wherein water was contained. Just 
as the men had stripped, and were proceeding to tap the furnace, the 
water in the pipe, converted into steam, burst down its front and let 
loose on them the molten metal, which instantaneously consumed Gard- 
ner ; Snape, terribly burnt, and mad with pain, leaped into the canal 
and then ran home and fell dead on the threshold. Swift survived to 
reach the hospital, where he died too. 

In further illustration of this matter, I beg the reader to look at the 
article on the " Decay of the English Race," in the Pall Mall Gazette 
of April 17, of this year; and at the articles on the "Report of the 
Thames Commission," in any journals of the same date. 



INTRODUCTION, 7 

defiling ground, instead of redeeming it, and in 
producing an entirely (in that place) valueless 
piece of metal, which can neither be eaten nor 
breathed, instead of medicinal fresh air and pure 
water ? 

There is but one reason for it, and at present a 
conclusive one, — that the capitalist can charge 
percentage on the work in the one case, and can- 
not in the other. If, having certain funds for 
supporting labor at my disposal, I pay men merely 
to keep my ground in order, my money is, in that 
function, spent once for all ; but if I pay them to 
dig iron out of my ground and work it, and sell 
it, I can charge rent for the ground, and percent- 
age both on the manufacture and the sale, and 
make my capital profitable in these three by-ways. 
The greater part of the profitable investment of 
capital, in the present day, is in operations of this 
kind, in which the public is persuaded to buy 
something of no use to it, on production or sale 
of which the capitalist may charge percentage; 
the said public remaining all the while under the 
persuasion that the percentages thus obtained are 
real national gains, whereas, they are merely 
filchings out of partially light pockets, to swell 
heavy ones. 

Thus, the Croyden publican buys the iron rail- 
ing, to make himself more conspicuous to drunk- 
ards. The public-house keeper on the other side 
of the way presently buys another railing, to out- 
rail him with. Both are, as to their relative at- 
tractiveness, just where they were before; but 
they have lost the price of the railings; which 



8 INTRODUCTION. 

they must either themselves finally lose, or make 
their aforesaid customers, the amateurs of railings, 
pay, by raising the price of their beer, or adulter- 
ating it. Either the publicans, or their custom- 
ers, are thus poorer \iy precisely what the capitalist 
has gained ; and the value of the industry itself, 
meantime, has been lost to the nation ; the iron 
bars in that form and place being wholly useless. 

It is this mode of taxation of the poor by the 
rich which is referred to in the text (§ 34), in 
comparing the modern acquisitive power of capi- 
tal with that of the lance and sword ; the only 
difference being that the levy of blackmail in old 
times was by force, and is now by cozening. The 
old rider and reiver frankly quartered himself on 
the publican for the night ; — the modern one 
merely makes his lance into an iron spike, and 
persuades his host to buy it. One comes as an 
open robber, the other as a cheating peddler ; but 
the result, to the injured person's pocket, is abso- 
lutely the same. Of course many useful indus- 
tries mingle with, and disguise the useless ones; 
and in the habits of energy aroused by the strug- 
gle, there is a certain direct good. It is better to 
spend four thousand pounds in making a gun, and 
then to blow it to pieces, than to pass life in idle- 
ness. Only do not let the proceeding be called 
** political economy." 

There is also a confused notion in the minds of 
many persons, that the gathering of the property 
of the poor into the hands of the rich does no 
ultimate harm ; since, in whosesoever hands it may 
be, it must be spent at last, and thus, they think. 



INTRODUCTION. ^ 

return to the poor again. This fallacy has been 
again and again exposed ; but granting the plea 
true, the same apology may, of course, be made 
for blackmail, or any other form of robbery. It 
might be (though practically it never is) as advan- 
tageous for the nation that the robber should have 
the spending of the money he extorts, as that the 
person robbed should have spent it. But this is 
no excuse for the theft. If I were to put a turn- 
pike on the road where it passes my own gate, and 
endeavor to exact a shilling from every passenger, 
the public would soon do away with my gate, 
without listening to any plea on my part that ' it 
was as advantageous to them, in the end, that I 
should spend their shillings, as that they them- 
selves should.' But if, instead of outfacing them 
with a turnpike, I can only persuade them to come 
in and buy stones, or old iron, or any other use- 
less thing, out of my ground, I may rob them to 
the same extent, and be, moreover, thanked as a 
public benefactor, and promoter of commercial 
prosperity. And this main question for the poor 
of England — for the poor of all countries — is 
wholly omitted in every common treatise on the 
subject of wealth. Even by the laborers them- 
selves, the operation of capital is regarded only in 
its effect on their immediate interests; never in 
the far more terrific power of its appointment of 
the kind and the object of labor. It matters little, 
ultimately, how much a laborer is paid for making 
anything; but it matters fearfully what the thing is, 
which he is compelled to make. If his labor is 
so ordered as to produce food, and fresh air, and 



10 INTRODUCTION. 

fresh water, no matter that his wages are low ; — 
the food and fresh air and water will be at last 
there ; and he will at last get them. But if he is 
paid to destroy food and fresh air, or to produce 
iron bars instead of them, — the food and air will 
finally not be there, and he will not get them, to 
his great and final inconvenience. 

I have been long accustomed, as all men en- 
gaged in work of investigation must be, to hear 
my statements laughed at for years before they are 
examined or believed; and I am generally content 
to wait the public's time. But it has not been 
without displeased surprise that I have found my- 
self totally unable, as yet, by any repetition, or 
illustration, to force this plain thought into my 
readers' heads, — that the wealth of nations, as of 
men, consists in substance, not in ciphers ; and 
that the real good of all work, and of all com- 
merce, depends on the final intrinsic worth of the 
thing you make, or get by it. This is a '' practi- 
cal " enough statement, one would think : but the 
English public has been so possessed by its mod- 
ern school of economists with the notion that 
Business is always good, whether it be busy in 
mischief or in benefit ; and that buying and sell- 
ing are always salutary, whatever the intrinsic 
worth of what you buy or sell, that it seems impos- 
sible to gain so much as a patient hearing for any 
inquiry respecting the substantial result of our 
eager modern labor. 

I have never felt more checked by the sense of 
this impossibility than in arranging the heads of 
the following lectures, which, though delivered at 



INTR OD UCriON. 1 1 

considerable intervals of time, and in different 
places, were not prepared without reference to 
each other. Their connection would, however, 
have been made far more distinct, if I had not 
been prevented, by what I feel to be another great 
difficulty in addressing English audiences, from 
enforcing, with any decision, the common, and to 
me the most important, part of their subjects. I 
chiefly desired to question my hearers — opera- 
tives, merchants, and soldiers, — as to the ultimate 
meaning of the business they had in hand ; and to 
know from them what they expected or intended 
their manufacture to come to, their selling to come 
to, and their killing to come to. That appeared 
the first point needing determination before I 
could speak to them with any real utility or effect. 
^' You craftsmen — salesmen — swordsmen, — do but 
tell me clearly what you want ; then, if I can say 
anything to help you, I will ; and if not, I will 
account to you as I best may for my inability." 

But in order to put this question into any terms, . 
one had first of all to face the difficulty — to me 
for the present insuperable, — the difficulty of 
knowing whether to address one's audience as be- 
lieving, or not believing, in any other world than 
this. For if you address any average modern 
English company as believing in an Eternal life, 
and then endeavor to draw any conclusions, from 
this assumed belief, as to their present business, 
they will forthwith tell you that '^what you say 
is very beautiful, but it is not practical." If, on 
the contrary, you frankly address them as un- 
believers in Eternal life, and try to draw any con- 



12 



INTRODUCTION. 



sequences from that unbelief, — they immediately 
hold you for an accursed person, and shake off 
the dust from their feet at you. 

And the more I thought over what I had got 
to say, the less I found I could say it, without 
some reference to this intangible or intractable 
question. It made all the difference, in asserting 
any principle of war, whether one assumed that a 
discharge of artillery would merely knead down a 
certain quantity of once living clay into a level 
line, as in a brick-field ; or whether, out of every 
separately Christian-named portion of the ruinous 
heap, there went out, into the smoke and dead- 
fallen air of battle, some astonished condition of 
soul, unwillingly released. It made all the 
difference, in speaking of the possible range of 
commerce, whether one assumed that all bargains 
related only to visible property — or whether prop- 
erty, for the present invisible, but nevertheless 
real, was elsewhere purchasable on other terms. 
It made all the difference, in addressing a body 
of men subject to considerable hardship, and hav- 
ing to find some way out of it — whether one 
could confidently say to them, '* My friends, — 
you have only to die, and all will be right ;" or 
whether one had any secret misgiving that such 
advice was more blessed to him that gave, than to 
him that took it. 

And therefore the deliberate reader will find, 
throughout these lectures, a hesitation in driving 
points home, and a pausing short of conclusions 
which he will feel I would fain have come to ; — 
hesitation which arises wholly from this un- 



INTRODUCTION. 1 3 

certainty of my hearers' temper. For I do not 
speak, nor have I ever spoken, since the time of 
first forward youth, in any proselyting temper, as 
desiring to persuade any one to believe anything ; 
but whomsoever I venture to address, I take for 
the time his creed as I find it, and endeavor to 
push it into such vital fruit as it seems capable of. 
Thus, it is a creed with a great part of the exist- 
ing English people, that they are in possession of 
a book which tells them, straight from the lips 
of God, all they ought to do, and need to know. I 
have read that book, with as much care as most 
of them, for some forty years ; and am thankful 
that, on those who trust it, I can press its plead- 
ings. My endeavor has been uniformly to make 
them trust it more deeply than they do ; trust it, 
not in their own favorite verses only, but in the 
sum of all ; trust it not as a fetish or talisman, 
which they are to be saved by daily repetitions 
of; but as a Captain's order, to be heard and 
obeyed at their peril. I was always encouraged 
by supposing my hearers to hold such belief. To 
these, if to any, I once had hope of addressing, 
with acceptance, words which insisted on the 
guilt of pride, and the futility of avarice ; from 
these, if from any, I once expected ratification of 
a political economy, which asserted that the life 
was more than the meat, and the body than 
raiment ; and these, it once seemed to me, I 
might ask, without being accused of fanaticism, 
not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the 
bestowal of their heart's treasure, to separate 
themselves from the crowd of whom it is 



14 



INTRODUCTION. 



written, "After all these things do the Gentiles 
seek." 

It cannot, however, be assumed, with any sem- 
blance of reason, that a general audience is now 
wholly, or even in majority, composed of these 
religious persons. A large portion must always 
consist of men who admit no such creed ; or who, 
at least, are inaccessible to appeals founded on it. 
And as, with the so-called Christian, I desired to 
plead for honest declaration and fulfilment of his 
belief in life, — with the so-called Infidel, I de- 
sired to plead for an honest declaration and fulfil- 
ment of his belief in death. The dilemma is in- 
evitable. Men must either hereafter live, or here- 
after die ; fate may be bravely met, and conduct 
wisely ordered, on either expectation ; but never 
in hesitation between ungrasped hope, and un- 
confronted fear. We usually believe in immor- 
tality, so far as to avoid preparation for death ; 
and in mortality, so far as to avoid preparation for 
anything after death. Whereas, a wise man will 
at least hold himself ready for one or other of 
two events, of which one or other is inevitable; 
and will have all things ended in order for his 
sleep, or left in order for his awakening. 

Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble 
judgment, if he determine to end them in order, 
as for sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed an 
enviable state of mind, but, as far as I can discern, 
an unusual one. I know few Christians so con- 
vinced of the splendor of the rooms in their 
Father's house, as to be happier when their friends 
are called to those mansions, than they would 



INTRODUCTION. 



15 



have been if the Queen had sent for them to live 
at court : nor has the Church's most ardent " de- 
sire to depart, and be with Christ," ever cured it 
of the singular habit of putting on mourning for 
every person summoned to such departure. On 
the contrary, a brave belief in death has been as- 
suredly held by many not ignoble persons, and 
it is a sign of the last depravity in the Church it- 
self, when it assumes that such a belief is incon- 
sistent with either purity of character, or energy 
of hand. The shortness of life is not, to any 
rational person, a conclusive reason for wasting 
the space of it which may be granted him ; nor 
does the anticipation of death to-morrow suggest, 
to any one but a drunkard, the expediency of 
drunkenness to-day. To teach that there is na 
device in the grave, may indeed make the de- 
viceless person more contented in his dulness ; but 
it will make the deviser only more earnest in de- 
vising; nor is human conduct likely, in every 
case, to be purer, under the conviction that all its 
evil may in a moment be pardoned, and all its 
wrong-doing in a moment redeemed ; and that 
the sigh of repentance, which purges the guilt of 
the past, will waft the soul into a felicity which 
forgets its pain, — than it may be under the 
sterner, and to many not unwise minds, more 
probable, apprehension, that " what a man sowcth 
that shall he also reap" — or others reap, — when 
he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no more 
in darkness, but lies down therein. 

But to men for whom feebleness of sight, or bit- 
terness of soul, or the offence given by the con- 



1 6 INTRODUCTION. 

duct of those who claim higher hope, may have 
rendered this painful creed the only possible one, 
there is an appeal to be made, more secure than 
any which can be addressed to happier persons. 
Might not a preacher, in comfortless but faithful 
zeal — from the poor height of a grave-hillock for 
his Hill of Mars, and with the Cave of the Eu- 
menides at his side — say to them : Hear me, you 
dying men, who will soon be deaf forever. For 
these others, at your right hand and your left, who 
look forward to a state of infinite existence, in 
which all their errors will be overruled, and all 
their faults forgiven ; — for these, who, stained and 
blackened in the battle smoke of mortality, have 
but to dip themselves for an instant in the font of 
death, and to rise renewed of plumage, as a dove 
that is covered with silver, and her feathers like 
gold : — for these, indeed, it may be permissible 
to waste their numbered moments, through faith 
in a future of innumerable hours ; to these, in their 
weakness, it may be conceded that they should 
tamper with sin which can only bring forth fruit 
of righteousness, and profit by the iniquity which, 
one day, will be remembered no more. In them, 
it may be no sign of hardness of heart to neglect 
the poor, over whom they know their Master is 
watching ; and to leave those to perish temporarily, 
who cannot perish eternally. But, iox you, there 
is no such hope, and therefore no such excuse. 
This fate, which you ordain for the wretched, you 
believe to be all their inheritance ; you .may crush 
them, before the moth, and they will never rise to 
rebuke you ; — their breath, which fails for lack of 



INTRODUCTION. ly 

food, once expiring, will never be recalled to whis- 
per against you a word of accusing ; — they and 
you, as you think, shall lie down together in the 
dust, and the worms cover you ; and for them 
there shall be no consolation, and on you 
no vengeance, — only the question murmured 
above your grave : " Who shall repay him what 
he hath done ? " Is it therefore easier for you in 
your heart to inflict the sorrow for which there is 
no remedy ? Will you take, wantonly, this little 
all of his life from your poor brother, and make 
his brief hours long to him with pain ? Will you 
be more prompt to the injustice which can never 
be redressed ; and more niggardly of the mercy 
which you can bestow but once, and which, refus- 
ing, you refuse forever ? 

I think better of you, even of the most selfish, 
than that you would do this, well understanding 
your act. And for yourselves, it seems to me, the 
question becomes not less grave when brought 
into these curt limits. If your life were but a 
fever fit, — the madness of a night, whose follies 
were all to be forgotten in the dawn, it might mat- 
ter little how you fretted away the sickly hours, 
— what toys you snatched at, or let fall, — what vis- 
ions you followed wistfully with the deceived eyes 
of sleepless frenzy. Is the earth only an hospital ? 
are health and heaven to come ? Then play, if 
you care to play, on the floor of the hospital dens. 
Knit its straw into what crowns please you ; gather 
the dust of it for treasure, and die rich in that, 
though clutching at the black motes in the air with 
your dying hands ; — and yet, it may be well with 



1 8 INTR OD UC TION. 

you. But if this life be 710 dream, and the world 
no hospital, but your Palace-inheritance ; — if all 
the peace and power and joy you can ever win, 
must be won now, and all fruit of victory gath- 
ered here, or never; — will you still, throughout 
the puny totality of your life, weary yourselves in 
the fire for vanity? If there is no rest which 
remaineth for you, is there none you might pres- 
ently take ? Was this grass of the earth made 
green for your shroud only, not for your bed ? and 
can you never lie down upon it, but only under it ? 
The heathen, in their saddest hours, thought not 
so. They knew that life brought its contest, but 
they expected from it also the crown of all con- 
test : No proud one ! no jewelled circlet flaming 
through Heaven above the height of the unmerited 
throne ; only some few leaves of wild olive, cool 
to the tired brow, through a few years of peace. 
It should have been of gold, they thought ; but 
Jupiter was poor ; this was the best the god could 
give them. Seeking a better than this, they had 
known it a mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, 
not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be 
found for them — only in kindly peace, fruitful and 
free. The wreath was to be of wild olive, mark 
you : — the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the 
rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch ; 
only with soft snow of blossom, and scarcely ful- 
filled fruit, mixed with gray leaf and thornset stem ; 
no fastening of diadem for you but with such sharp 
embroidery ! But this, such as it is, you may win 
while yet you live ; type of gray honor and sweet 



INTRODUCTION. 19 

rest,* Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and 
undisturbed trust, and requited love, and the sight 
of the peace of others, and the ministry to their 
pain ; — these, and the blue sky above you, and the 
sweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath ; and 
mysteries and presences, innumerable, of living 
things, — may yet be here your riches ; untorment- 
ing and divine : serviceable for the life that now 
is ; nor, it may be, without promise of that which 
is to come. 

* lizXtrbzaca^ aedluv / evEKev. 



CONTENTS, 



LECTURE I. 

PAGE 

Work 23 



LECTURE IL 
Traffic 6i 

LECTURE in. 
War 95 

LECTURE IV. 
The Future of England 139 



Appendix . . . . • . . .167 

(21) 



WORK 



(23) 



WORK. 25 



WORK. 



My Friends, — I have not come among you to- 
night to endeavor to give you an entertaining lec- 
ture ; but to tell you a few plain facts, and ask you a 
few plain questions. I have seen and known too 
much of the struggle for life among our laboring 
population, to feel at ease, under any circumstances, 
in inviting them to dwell on the trivialities of my 
own studies; but, much more, as I meet to-night, 
for the first time, the members of a working Insti- 
tute established in the district in which I have 
passed the greater part of my life, I am desirous 
that we should at once understand each other, 
on graver matters. I would fain tell you, with 
what feelings, and with what hope, I regard this 
Institute, as one of many such, now happily es- 
tablished throughout England, as well as in other 
countries ; and preparing the way for a great 
change in all the circumstances of industrial life ; 
but of which the success must wholly depend 
upon our clearly understanding the conditions, 
and above all, the necessary limits of this change. 
No teacher can truly promote the cause of educa- 
tion, until he knows the mode of life for which 
that education is to prepare his pupil. And the 
fact that he is called upon to address you, nomi- 
nally, as a *' Working Class," must compel him, 
if he is in any wise earnest or thoughtful, to in- 



26 ■ THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

quire in the outset, on what you yourselves sup- 
pose this class distinction has been founded in 
the past, and must be founded in the future. 
The manner of the amusement, and the manner 
of the teaching, which any of us can offer you, 
must depend wholly on our first understanding 
from you, whether you think the distinction here- 
tofore drawn between working men and others is 
truly or falsely founded. Do you accept it as it 
stands ? do you wish it to be modified ? or do 
you think the object of education is to efface it, 
and make us forget it forever? 

Let me make myself more distinctly under- 
stood. We call this — you and I— a " Working 
Men's" Institute, and our college in London, a 
'* Working Men's" College. Now, how do you 
consider that these several institutes differ, or 
ought to differ, from " idle men's " institutes and 
'* idle men's " colleges? Or by what other word 
than ''idle" shall I distinguish those whom the 
happiest and wisest of working men do not ob- 
ject to call the ''Upper Classes"? Are there 
necessarily upper classes ? necessarily lower ? How 
much should those always be elevated, how much 
these always depressed? And I pray those 
among my audience who chance to occupy, at 
present, the higher position, to forgive me what 
offence there may be in what I am going to say. 
It is not /who wish to say it. Bitter voices say 
it ; voices of battle and of famine through all the 
world, which must be heard some day, whoever 
keeps silence. Neither, as you well know, is it to 
yotc specially that I say it. I am sure that most 



WORK. 



27 



now present know their duties of kindness, and 
fulfil them, better perhaps than I do mine. But 
I speak to you as representing your whole class, 
which errs, I know, chiefly by thoughtlessness, 
but not therefore the less terribly. Wilful error 
is limited by the will, but what limit is there to 
that of which we are unconscious ? 

Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to these 
workmen, and ask them what they think the 
*' upper classes " are, and ought to be, in relation 
to them. Answer, you workmen who are here, as 
you would among yourselves, frankly ; and tell 
me how you would have me call your employers. 
Am I to call them — would you think me right in 
calling them — the idle classes ? I think you 
would feel somewhat uneasy, and as if I were not 
treating my subject honestly, or speaking from 
my heart, if I proceeded in my lecture under the 
supposition that all rich people were idle. You 
would be both unjust and unwise if you allowed 
me to say that ; — not less unjust than the rich 
people who say that all the poor are idle, and will 
never work if they can help it, or more than they 
can help. 

For indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor and 
idle rich ; and there are busy poor and busy rich. 
Many a beggar is as lazy as if he had ten thou- 
sand a year ; and many a man of large fortune is 
busier than his errand-boy, and never would think 
of stopping in the street to play marbles. So 
that, in a large view, the distinction between 
workers and idlers, as between knaves and honest 
men, runs through the very heart and innermost 



28 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

nature of men of all ranks and in all positions. 
There is a working class — strong and happy, — 
among both rich and poor ; there is an idle class 
— weak, wicked, and miserable, — among both 
rich and poor. And the worst of the misunder- 
standings arising between the two orders come of 
the unlucky fact that the wise of one class [how 
little wise in this !] habitually contemplate the 
foolish of the other. If the busy rich people 
watched and rebuked the idle rich people, all 
would be right among them : and if the busy poor 
people watched and rebuked the idle poor people, 
all would be right among them. But each looks 
for the faults of the other. A hardworking man 
of property is particularly offended by an idle 
beggar ; and an orderly, but poor, workman is 
naturally intolerant of the licentious luxury of 
the rich. And what is severe judgment in the 
minds of the just men of either class, becomes 
fierce enmity in the unjust — but among the unjust 
only. None but the dissolute among the poor 
look upon the rich as their natural enemies, or 
desire to pillage their houses and divide their 
property. None but the dissolute among the 
rich speak in opprobious terms of the vices and 
follies of the poor.* 

There is, then, no worldly distinction between 
idle and industrious people ; and I am going to- 
night to speak only of the industrious. The idle 
people we will put out of our thoughts at once — - 

* Note this paragraph. I cannot enough wonder at the want of com- 
mon charity which blinds so many people to the quite simple truth to 
which it refers. 



WORK. 29 

they are mere nuisances — what ought to be done 
with them, we'll talk of at another time. But 
there are class distinctions among the industrious 
themselves; — tremendous distinctions, which rise 
and fall to every degree in the infinite thermom- 
eter of human pain and of human power, — dis- 
tinctions of high and low, of lost and won, to 
the whole reach of man's soul and body. 

These separations we will study, and the 
laws of them, among energetic men only, who, 
whether they work or whether they play, put their 
strength into the work, and their strength into 
the game ; being in the full sense of the word 
*Mndustrious," one way or another, — with pur- 
pose, or without. And these distinctions are 
mainly four : — 

I. Between those who work, and those who 
play. 

II. Between those who produce the means of 
life, and those who consume them. 

III. Between those who work with the head, 
and those who work with the hand. 

IV. Between those who work wisely, and those 
who work foolishly. 

For easier memory, let us say we are going to 
oppose, in our examination, — 
I. Work to play ; 
II. Production to consumption ; 

III. Head to hand ; and, 

IV. Sense to nonsense. 

I. First, then, of the distinction between the 
classes who work and the classes who play. Of 
course we must agree upon a definition of these 



30 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

terms, — work and play, — before going farther. 
Now, roughly, not with vain subtlety of definition, 
but for plain use of the words, "play" is an 
exertion of body or mind, made to please our- 
selves, and with no determined end ; and work is 
a thing done because it ought to be done, and 
with a determined end. You play, as you call it, 
at cricket, for instance. That is as hard work as 
anything else ; but it amuses you, and it has no 
result but the amusement. If it were done as an 
ordered form of exercise, for health's sake, it 
would become work directly. So, in like man- 
ner, whatever we do to please ourselves, and only 
for the sake of the pleasure, not for an ultimate 
object, is *'play," the *' pleasing thing," not the 
useful thing. Play may be useful in a secondary 
sense (nothing is indeed more useful or neces- 
sary) ; but the use of it depends on its being 
spontaneous. 

Let us, then, inquire together what sort of 
games the playing class in England spend their 
lives in playing at. 

The first of all English games is making money. 
That is an all-absorbing game ; and we knock 
each other down oftener in playing at that than 
at football, or any other roughest sport ; and it is 
absolutely without purpose ; no one who engages 
heartily in that game ever knows why. Ask a 
great money-maker what he wants to do with his 
money — he never knows. He doesn't make it to 
do anything with it. He gets it only that he may 
get it. " What will yon make of what you have 
got?" you ask. "Well, I'll get more," he says. 



WORK, 



31 



Just as, at cricket, you get more runs. There's no 
use in the runs, but to get more of them than other 
people is the game. And there's no use in the 
money, but to have more of it than other people 
is the game. So all that great foul city of Lon- 
don there, — rattling, growling, smoking, stink- 
ing, — a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, 
pouring out poison at every pore, — you fancy it 
is a city of work ? Not a street of it ! It is a 
great city of play ; very nasty play, and very 
hard play, but still play. It is only Lord's 
cricket ground without the turf, — a huge billiard 
table without the cloth, and with pockets as deep 
as the bottomless pit ; but mainly a billiard table, 
after all. 

Well, the first great English game is this play- 
ing at counters. It differs from the rest in that it 
appears always to be producing money, while 
every other game is expensive. But it does not 
always produce money. There's a great differ- 
ence between ** winning " money and " making " 
it ; a great difference between getting it out of 
another man's pocket into ours, or filling both. 

Our next great English games, however, hunt- 
ing and shooting, are costly altogether ; and how 
much we are fined for them annually in land, 
horses, gamekeepers, and game laws, and the re- 
sultant demoralization of ourselves, our children, 
and our retainers, and all else that accompanies 
that beautiful and special English game, I will not 
endeavor to count now : but note only that, except 
for exercise, this is not merely a useless game, but 
a deadly one, to all connected with it. For 



32 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

through horse-racing, you get every form of what 
the higher classes everywhere call '' Play," in dis- 
tinction from all other plays ; that is, gambling ; 
and through game-preserving, you get also some 
curious laying out of ground ; that beautiful 
arrangement of dwelling-house for man and beast, 
by which we have grouse and black-cock — so many 
brace to the acre, and men and women — so many 
brace to the garret. I often wonder what the 
angelic builders and surveyors — the angelic 
builders who build the " many mansions" up 
above there; and the angelic surveyors, who meas- 
ured that four-square city with their measuring 
reeds — I wonder what they think, or are supposed 
to think, of the laying out of ground by this 
nation.* 

Then, next to the gentlemen's game of hunt- 
ing, we must put the ladies' game of dressing. It 
is not the cheapest of games. And I wish I could 
tell you what this ''play" costs, altogether, in 
England, France, and Russia annually. But it is 
a pretty game, and on certain terms I like it ; 
nay, I don't see it played quite as much as I 
would fain have it. You ladies like to lead the 
fashion : — by all means lead it — lead it thoroughly, 
— lead it far enough. Dress yourselves nicely, and 
dress everybody else nicely. Lead the fashiofis 
for the poor {ix^X \ make /7^^;// look well, and you 
yourselves will look, in ways of which you have 
now no conception, all the better. The fashions 

* The subject is pursued at some length in Fors Clavigera for 
March, 1873; but I have not yet properly stated the opposite side of 
the question nor insisted on tlie value of uncultivated land to the 
national health of body and mind. 



WORK. ^^ 

you have set for some time among your peasantry 
are not pretty ones ; their doublets are too irregu- 
larly slashed, or as Chaucer calls it '' all to- 
slittered," though not for "queintise," and the 
wind blows too frankly through them. 

Then there are other games, wild enough, as I 
could show you if I had time. 

There's playing at literature, and playing at 
art ; — very different, both, from working at litera- 
ture, or working at art, but I've no time to speak 
of these. I pass to the greatest of all — the play 
of plays, the great gentlemen's game, which ladies 
like them best to play at, — the game of War. It 
is entrancingly pleasant to the imagination ; we 
dress for it, however, more finely than for any 
other sport ', and go out to it, not merely in 
scarlet, as to hunt, but in scarlet and gold, and 
all manner of fine colors ; of course we could 
fight better in gray, and without feathers ; but all 
nations have agreed that it is good to be well 
dressed at this play. Then the bats and balls are 
very costly ; our English and French bats, with 
the balls and wickets, even those which we don't 
make any use of, costing, I suppose, now, about 
fifteen millions of money annually to each nation ; 
all which you know is paid for by hard laborer's 
work in the furrow and furnace. A costly game ! 
— not to speak of its consequences ; I will say at 
present nothing of these. The mere immediate 
cost of all these plays is what I want you to con- 
sider ; they are all paid for in deadly work some- 
where, as many of us know too well. The jewel- 
cutter, whose sight fails over the diamonds ] the 



34 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

weaver, whose arm fails over the web ; the iron- 
forger, whose breath fails before the furnace — they 
know what work is — they, who have all the work, 
and none of the play, except a kind they have 
named for themselves down in the black north 
country, where '^play" means being laid up by 
sickness. It is a pretty example for philologists, 
of varying dialect, this change in the sense of the 
word, as used in the black country of Birming- 
ham, and the red and black country of Baden 
Baden. Yes, gentlemen, and gentlewomen, of 
England, who think ** one moment unamused a 
misery, not made for feeble man," this is what 
you have brought the word ''play" to mean, in 
the heart of merry England ! You may have your 
fluting and piping ; but there are sad children sit- 
ting in the market-place, who indeed cannot say 
to you, *' We have piped unto you, and ye have 
not danced : " but eternally shall say to you, 
"We have mourned unto you, and ye have not 
lamented." 

This, then, is the first distinction between the 
''upper and lower" classes. And this is one 
which is by no means necessary ; which indeed 
must, in process of good time, be by all honest 
men's consent abolished. Men will be taught that 
an existence of play, sustained by the blood of 
other creatures, is a good existence for gnats and 
jelly-fish ; but not for men : that neither days, nor 
lives, can be made holy or noble by doing nothing 
in them : that the best prayer at the beginning of 
a day is that we may not lose its moments ; and 
the best grace before meat, the consciousness that 



WORK. 



35 



we have justly earned our dinner. And when we 
have this much of plain Christianity preached to 
us again, and cease to translate the strict words, 
'' Son, go work to-day in my vineyard," into the 
dainty ones : " Baby, go play to-day in my vine- 
yard," we shall all be workers, in one way or 
another ; and this much at least of the distinction 
between "upper" and "lower" forgotten. 

II. I pass then to our second distinction ; be- 
tween the rich and poor, between Dives and Laz- 
arus, — distinction which exists more sternly, I 
suppose, in this day, than ever in the world, Pagan 
or Christian, till now. Consider, for instance, what 
the general tenor of such a paper as the Mo7'ning 
Post implies of delicate luxury among the rich ; 
and then read this chance extract from it : — 

"Yesterday morning, at eight o'clock, a 
woman, passing a dung-heap in the stone-yard 
near the recently erected almshouses in Shadwell 
Gap, High Street, Shadwell, called the attention 
of a Thames police-constable to a man in a sitting 
position on the dung-heap, and said she was afraid 
he was dead. Her fears proved to be true. The 
wretched creature appeared to have been dead 
several hours. He had perished of cold and wet, 
and the rain had been beating down on him all 
night. The deceased was a bone-picker. He 
was in the lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, 
and half-starved. The police had frequently 
driven him away from the stone-yard, between 
sunset and sunrise, and told him to go home. 
He selected a most desolate spot for his wretched 
death. A penny and some bones were found in 



^e THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

his pockets. The deceased was between fifty and 
sixty years of age. Inspector Roberts, of the K 
division, has given directions for inquiries to be 
made at the lodging-houses respecting the de- 
ceased, to ascertain his identity if possible." — 
Morning Post, November 25, 1864. 

Compare the statement of the finding bones in 
his pocket with the following, from the Telegraph 
of January 16 of this year: — 

'* Again, the dietary scale for adult and juvenile 
paupers was .drawn up by the most conspicuous 
political economists in England. It is low in 
quantity, but it is sufficient to support nature ; 
yet within ten years of the passing of the Poor 
Law Act, we heard of the paupers in the Andover 
Union gnawing the scraps of putrid flesh and 
sucking the marrow from the bones of horses 
which they were employed to crush." 

You see my reason for thinking that our Laza- 
rus of Christianity has some advantage over the 
Jewish one. Jewish Lazarus expected, or at least 
prayed, to be fed with crumbs from the rich 
man's table ; but our Lazarus is fed with crumbs 
from the dog's table. 

Now this distinction between rich and poor 
rests on two bases. Within its proper limits, on 
a basis which is lawful and everlastingly neces- 
sary ; beyond them, on a basis unlawful, and 
everlastingly corrupting the frame-work of society. 
The lawful basis of wealth is, that a man who 
works should be paid the fair value of his work ; 
and that if he does not choose to spend it to-day, 
he should have free leave to keep it, and spend it 



WORK. 3^ 

to-morrow. Thus, an industrious man working 
daily, and laying by daily, attains at last the pos- 
session of an accumulated sum of wealth, to which 
he has absolute right. The idle person who will 
not work, and the wasteful person who lays noth- 
ing by^ at the end of the same time will be 
doubly poor — poor in possession, and dissolute in 
moral habit ; and he will then naturally covet the 
money which the other has saved. And if he is 
then allowed to attack the other, and rob him of 
his well-earned wealth, there is no more any mo- 
tive for saving, or any reward for good conduct ; 
and all society is thereupon dissolved, or exists 
only in systems of rapine. Therefore the first 
necessity of social life is the clea.rness of national 
conscience in enforcing the law — that he should 
keep who has justly earned. 

That law, I say, is the proper basis of distinc- 
tion between rich and poor. But there is also a 
false basis of distinction ; namely, the power held 
over those who are earning wealth by those who 
already possess it, and only use it to gain more. 
There will be always a number of men who would 
fain set themselves to the accumulation of wealth 
as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily, that 
class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in 
intellect, and more or less cowardly. It is ph3^si- 
cally impossible for a well-educated, intellectual, 
or brave man to make money the chief object of 
his thoughts ; just as it is for him to make his 
dinner the principal object of them. All healthy 
people like their dinners, but their dinner is not the 
main object of their lives. So all healthily-minded 



38 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

people like making money — ought to like it, and to 
enjoy the sensation of winning it ; but the main 
object of their life is not money ; it is something 
better than money. A good soldier, for instance, 
mainly wishes to do his fighting well. He is glad 
of his pay — very properly so, and justly grumbles 
when you keep him ten years without it — still, his 
main notion of life is to win battles, not to be 
paid for winning them. So of clergymen. They 
like pew-rents, and baptismal fees, of course ; but 
yet, if they are brave and well-educated, the pew- 
rent is not the sole object of their lives, and the 
baptismal fee is not the sole purpose of the bap- 
tism ; the clergyman's object is essentially to bap- 
tize and preach, not to be paid for preaching. 
So of doctors. They like fees no doubt, — ought 
to like them ; yet if they are brave and well-edu- 
cated, the entire object of their lives is not fees. 
They, on the whole, desire to cure the sick ; and, 
— if they are good doctors, and the choice were 
fairly put to them, — would rather cure their pa- 
tient and lose their fee, than kill him, and get it. 
And so with all other brave and rightly-trained 
men ; their work is first, their fee second — very 
important always, but still second. But in every 
nation, as I said, there are a vast class who are 
ill-educated, cowardly, and more or less stupid. 
And with these people, just as certainly the fee is 
first, and the work second, as with brave people 
the work is first and the fee second. And this is 
no small distinction. It is between life and death 
in a man, between heaven and hell for him. You 
cannot serve two masters ; — you must serve one or 



WORK. 39 

Other. If your work is first with you, and your 
fee second, work is your master, and the lord of 
work, who is God. But if your fee is first with 
you, and your work second, fee is your master, 
and the lord of fee, who is the Devil ; and not 
only the Devil, but the lowest of devils — the 
''least erected fiend that fell." So there you 
have it in brief terms ; Work first — you are God's 
servants ; Fee first — you are the Fiend's. And it 
makes a difference, now and ever, believe me, 
whether you serve Him who has on His vesture 
and thigh written, "King of Kings," and whose 
service is perfect freedom ; or him on whose 
vesture and thigh the name is written, " Slave of 
Slaves," and whose service is perfect slavery. 

However, in every nation there are, and must 
always be, a certain number of these Fiend's ser- 
vants, who have it principally for the object of 
their lives to make money. They are always, as I 
said, more or less stupid, and cannot conceive of 
anything else so nice as money. Stupidity is al- 
ways the basis of the Judas bargain. We do great 
injustice to Iscariot, in thinking him wicked above 
all common wickedness. He was only a common 
money-lover, and, like all money-lovers, did not 
understand Christ ; — could not make out the 
worth of Him, or meaning of Him. He never 
thought He would be killed. He was horror- 
struck when he found that Christ would be killed ; 
tlirew his money away instantly, and hanged him- 
self. Hov/ many of our present money-seekers, 
think you, would have the grace to hang them- 
selves, whoever was killed? But Judas was a 



40 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 



common, selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fellow; 
his hand always in the bag of the poor, not caring 
for them. Helpless to understand Christ, yet be- 
lieved in Him, much more than most of us do ; 
had seen Him do miracles, thought He was quite 
strong enough to shift for Himself, and he, Judas, 
might as well make his own little bye-perquisites 
out of the affair. Christ would come out of it 
well enough, and he have his thirty pieces. Now, 
that is the money-seeker's idea, all over the world. 
He doesn't hate Christ, but can't understand 
Him — doesn't care for Him — sees no good in that 
benevolent business ; makes his own little job out 
of it at all events, come what will. And thus, 
out of every mass of men, you have a certain 
number of bagmen — your " fee-first " men, whose 
main object is to make money. And they do 
make it — make it in all sorts of unfair ways, 
chiefly by the weight and force of money itself, or 
what is called the power of capital; that is to say, 
the power which money, once obtained, has over 
the labor of the poor, so that the capitalist can 
take all its produce to himself, except the laborer's 
food. That is the modern Judas' s way of " carry- 
ing the bag," and "■ bearing what is put therein." 
Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an unfair ad- 
vantage ? Has not the man who has worked for 
the money a right to use it as he best can ? No, 
in this respect, money is now exactly what moun- 
tain promontories over public roads were in olTi 
times. The barons fought for them fairly : — the 
strongest and cunningest got them ; then fortified 
them, and made every one who passed below pay 



WORK. 



41 



toll. Well, capital now is exactly what crags 
were then. Men fight fairly (we will, at least, 
grant so much, though it is more than we ought) 
for their money ; but, once having got it, the forti- 
fied millionaire can make everybody who passes 
below pay toll to his million, and build another 
tower of his money castle. And I can tell you, 
the poor vagrants by the roadside suffer now quite 
as much from the bag-baron, as ever they did from 
the crag-baron. Bags and crags have just the 
same result on rags. I have not time, however, 
to-night to show you in how many ways the power 
of capital is unjust ; but remember this one great 
principle — you will find it unfailing — that when- 
ever money is the principal object of life with 
either man or nation, it is both got ill, and spent 
ill ; and does harm both in the getting and spend- 
ing ; but when it is not the principal object, it and 
all other things will be well got and well spent. 
And here is the test, with every man, of whether 
money is the principal object with him, or not. 
If in mid-life he could pause and say, ** Now I 
have enough to live upon, I'll live upon it; and 
having well earned it, I will also well spend it, 
and go out of the world poor, as I came into it," 
then money is not principal with him ; but if, 
having enough to live upon in the manner befit- 
ting his character and rank, he still wants to make 
more, and to die rich, then money is the principal 
object with him, and it becomes a curse to him- 
self, and generally to those who spend it after 
him. For you know it must be spent some day ; 
the only question is whether the man who makes 



42 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

it shall spend it, or some one else, and generally 
it is better for the maker to spend it, for he will 
know best its value and use. And if a man does 
not choose thus to spend his money, he must 
either hoard it or lend it, and the worst thing he 
can generally do is to lend it ; for borrowers are 
nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent 
money that all evil is mainly done, and all un- 
just war protracted. 

For observe what the real fact is, respecting 
loans to foreign military governments, and how 
strange it is. If your little boy came to you to 
ask for money to spend in squibs and crackers, 
you would think twice before you gave it him, and 
you would have some idea that it was wasted, 
when you saw it fly off in fireworks, even though 
he did no mischief with it. But the Russian chil- 
dren and Austrian children come to you, borrow- 
ing money, not to spend in innocent squibs, but 
in cartridges and bayonets to attack you in India 
with, and to keep down all noble life in Italy with, 
and to murder Polish women and children with ; 
and that you will give at once, because they pay 
you interest for it. Now, in order to pay you 
that interest, they must tax every working peasant 
in their dominions ; and on that work you live. 
You therefore at once rob the Austrian peasant, 
assassinate or banish the Polish peasant, and you 
live on the produce of the theft, and the bribe for 
the assassination ! That is the broad fact — that is 
the practical meaning of your foreign loans, and 
of most large interest of money ; and then you 
quarrel with Bishop Colenso, forsooth, as if he de- 



WORK. 



43 



nied the Bible, and you believed it ! though, every 
deliberate act of your lives is a new defiance of its 
primary orders. 

III. I must pass, however, now to our third 
condition of separation, between the men who 
work with the hand and those who work with the 
head. 

And here we have at last an inevitable distinc- 
tion. There must be work done by the arms, or 
none of us could live. There must be work done 
by the brains, or the life we get would not be 
worth having. And the same men cannot do 
both. There is rough work to be done, and rough 
men must do it ; there is gentle work to be done, 
and gentlemen must do it ; and it is physically im- 
possible that one class should do, or divide, the 
work of the other. And it is of no use to try to 
conceal this sorrowful fact .by fine words, and to 
talk to the workman about the honorableness of 
manual labor, and the dignity of humanity. 
Rough work, honorable or not, takes the life out of 
ns; and the man who has been heaving clay out of 
a ditch all day, or driving an express train against 
the north wind all night, or holding a collier's 
helm in a gale on a lee-shore, or whirling white- 
hot iron at a furnace mouth, is not the same man 
at the end of his day, or night, as one who 
has been sitting in a quiet room, with everything 
comfortable about him, reading books, or classing 
butterflies, or painting pictures. If it is any com- 
fort to you to be told that the rough work is the 
more honorable of the two, I should be sorry to 
take that much of consolation from you ; and in 



44 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 



some sense I need not. The rough work is at all 
events real, honest, and, generally, though not 
always, useful ; whilet he fine work is, a great deal 
of it, foolish and false as well as fine, and there- 
fore dishonorable : but when both kinds are 
equally well and worthily done, the head's is the 
noble work, and the hand's the ignoble. There- 
fore, of all hand work whatsoever, necessary for 
the maintenance of life, those old words, '' In the 
sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread," indicate 
that the inherent nature of it is one of calamity : 
and that the ground, cursed for our sake, casts 
also some shadow of degradation into our contest 
with its thorn and its thistle ; so that all nations 
have held their days honorable, or "holy," and 
constituted them "holydays" or '* holidays," by 
making them days of rest ; and the promise, 
which, among all our distant hopes, seems to cast 
the chief brightness over death, is that blessing 
of the dead who die in the Lord, that '' they rest 
from their labors, and their works do follow 
them." 

And thus the perpetual question and contest 
must arise, who is to do this rough work? and 
how is the worker of it to be comforted, redeemed, 
and rew^arded ? and what kind of play should he 
have, and what rest, in this world, sometimes, as 
well as in the next? Well, my good laborious 
friends, these questions will take a little time to 
answer yet. They must be answered : all good 
men are occupied with them, and all honest 
thinkers. There's grand head work doing about 
them ; but much must be discovered, and much 



WORK. 



45 



attempted in vain, before anything decisive can 
be told you. Only note these few particulars, 
which are already sure. 

As to the distribution of the hard work. None 
of us, or very few of us, do either hard or soft work 
because we think we ought ; but because we have 
chanced to fall into the way of it, and cannot 
help ourselves. Now, nobody does anything well 
that they cannot help doing : work is only done 
well when it is done with a will ; and no man has 
a thoroughly sound will unless he knows he is 
doing what he should, and is in his place. And, 
depend upon it, all work must be done at last, not 
in a disorderly, scrambling, doggish way, but in 
an ordered, soldierly, human way — a lawful or 
^Moyal" way. Men are enlisted for the labor 
that kills — the labor of war : they are counted, 
trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. Let 
them be enlisted also for the labor that feeds : let 
them be counted, trained, fed, dressed, praised for 
that. Teach the plough exercise as carefully as 
you do the sword exercise, and let the officers of 
troops of life be held as much gentlemen as the 
officers of troops of death ; and all is done : but 
neither this, nor any other right thing, can be 
accomplished — you can't even see your way to it 
— unless, first of all, both servant and master are 
resolved that, come what will of it, they will do 
each other justice. 

People are perpetually squabbling about what 
will be best to do, or easiest to do, or advisablest 
to do, or profitablest to do ; but they never, so far 
as I hear them talk, ever ask what it is just to do. 



46 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

And it is the law of heaven that you shall not be 
able to judge what is wise or easy, unless you are 
first resolved to judge what is just, and to do it. 
That is the one thing constantly reiterated by our 
Master — the order of all others that is given 
oftenest — *' Do justice and judgment." That's 
your Bible order; that's the "Service of God," 
— not praying nor psalm-singing. You are told, 
indeed, to sing psalms when you are merry, and 
to pray when you need anything; and, by the 
perverseness of the Evil Spirit, we get to think 
that praying and psalm-singing are " service." If 
a child finds itself in want of anything, it runs in 
and asks its father for it — does it call that doing 
its father a service ? If it begs for a toy or a piece 
of cake — does it call that serving its father? 
That, with God, is prayer, and He likes to hear 
it : He likes you to ask Him for cake when you 
want it ; but He doesn't call that " serving 
Him." Begging is not serving: God likes mere 
beggars as little as you do — He likes honest ser- 
vants, not beggars. So when a child loves its 
father very much, and is very happy, it may sing 
little songs about him; but it doesn't call that 
serving its father; neither is singing songs about 
God, serving God. It is enjoying ourselves, if 
it's anything; most probably it is nothing; but 
if it's anything, it is serving ourselves, not God. 
And yet we are impudent enough to call our 
beggings and chauntings " Divine service: " we 
say " Divine service will be ' performed ' " (that's 
our word — the form of it gone through) ** at so- 
and-so o'clock." Alas! unless we perform Divine 



WORK. 47" 

service in every willing act of life, we never per- 
form it at all. The one Divine work — the one 
ordered sacrifice — is to do justice ; and it is the 
last we are ever inclined to do. Anything rather 
than that ! As much charity as you choose, but 
no justice. ''Nay," you will say, ** charity is 
greater than justice." Yes, it is greater; it is 
the summit of justice — it is the temple of which 
justice is the foundation. But you can't have 
the top without the bottom ; you cannot build 
upon charity. You must build upon justice, for 
this main reason, that you have not, at first, 
charity to build with. It is the last reward of 
good work. Do justice to your brother (you can 
do that, whether you love him or not), and you 
will come to love him. But do injustice to him, 
because you don't love him; and you will come 
to hate him. 

It is all very fine to think you can build upon 
charity to begin with ; but you will find all you 
win have got to begin with, begins at home, and 
is essentially love of yourself. You well-to-do 
people, for instance, who are here to-night, will go 
to " Divine service " next Sunday, all nice and 
tidy, and your little children will have their tight 
little Sunday boots on, and lovely little Sunday 
feathers in their hats ; and you'll think, compla- 
cently and piously, how lovely they look going to 
church in their best ! So they do : and you love 
them heartily, and you like sticking feathers in 
their hats. That's all right : that is charity; but 
it is charity beginning at home. Then you will 
come to the poor little crossing-sweeper, got up 



48 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

also, — it, in its Sunday dress, — the dirtiest rags it 
has, — that it may beg the better : you will give it 
a penny, and think how good you are, and how 
good God is to prefer your child to the crossing- 
sweeper and bestow on it a divine hat, feathers, 
and boots, and the pleasure of giving pence in- 
stead of begging for them. That's charity going 
abroad. But what does Justice say, walking and 
watching near us? Christian Justice has been 
strangely mute, and seemingly blind ; and if not 
blind, decrepit, this many a day : she keeps her 
accounts still, however — quite steadily — doing 
them at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, 
and through acutest spectacles (the only modern 
scientific invention she cares about). You must 
put your ear down ever so close to her lips to hear 
her speak ; and then you will start at what she 
first whispers, for it will certainly be, "Why 
shouldn't that little crossing-sweeper have a feather 
on its head, as well as your own child?" Then 
you may ask Justice, in an amazed manner, '' How 
she can possibly be so foolish as to think children 
could sweep crossings with feathers on their 
heads? " Then you stoop again, and Justice says 
— still in her dull, stupid way — "Then, why don't 
you, every other Sunday, leave your child to sweep 
the crossing, and take the little sweeper to church 
in a hat and feather ? " Mercy on us (you think), 
what will she say next ? And you answer, of course, 
that "you don't, because everybody ought to re- 
main content in the position in which Providence 
has placed them." Ah, my friends, that's the gist 
of the whole question. Did Providence put them 



WORK. 



49 



in that position, or did you ? You knock a man 
into a ditch, and then you tell him to remain con- 
tent in the ''position in which Providence has 
placed him." That's modern Christianity. You 
say — ^^We did not knock him into the ditch." 
We shall never know what you have done or left 
undone, until the question with us every morning, 
is not how to do the gainful thing, but how to do 
the just thing during the day; nor until we are 
at least so far on the way to being Christian, as to 
acknowledge that maxim of the poor half-way 
Mahometan, '' One hour in the execution of jus- 
tice is worth seventy years of prayer." 

Supposing, then, we have it determined with 
appropriate justice, who is to do the hand work, 
the next question must be how the hand-workers 
are to be paid, and how they are to be refreshed, 
and what play they are to have. Now, the pos- 
sible quantity of play depends on the possible 
quantity of pay ; and the quantity of pay is not 
a matter for consideration to hand-workers only, 
but to all workers. Generally, good, useful work, 
whether of the hand or head, is either ill-paid, or 
not paid at all. I don't say it should be so, but 
it always is so. People, as a rule, only pay for 
being amused or being cheated, not for being 
served. Five thousand a year to your talker, and 
a shilling a day to your fighter, digger, and thinker, 
is the rule. None of the best head work in art, 
literature, or science, is ever paid for. How 
much do you think Homer got for his Iliad? or 
Dante for his Paradise? only bitter bread and 
salt, and going up and down other people's stairs. 



50 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

In science, the man who discovered the telescope, 
and first saw heaven, was paid with a dungeon ; 
the man who invented the microscope, and first 
saw earth, died of starvation, driven from his home. 
It is indeed very clear that God means all thor- 
oughly good work and talk to be done for nothing. 
Baruch, the scribe, did not get a penny a line for 
writing Jeremiah's second roll for him, I fancy ; 
and St. Stephen did not get bishop's pay for that 
long sermon of his to the Pharisees; nothing but 
stones. For, indeed, that is the world-father's 
proper payment. So surely as any of the world's 
children work for the world's good, honestly, with 
head and heart ; and come to it, saying, ** Give us 
a little bread, just to keep the life in us," the world- 
father answers them, ''No, my children, not 
bread ; a stone, if you like, or as many as you 
need, to keep you quiet and tell to future ages, 
how unpleasant you made yourself to the one you 
lived in." 

But the hand-workers are not so ill off as all 
this comes to. The worst that can happen to you 
is to break stones ; not be broken by them. And 
for you there will come a time for better payment; 
we shall pay people not quite so much for talking 
in Parliament and doing nothing, as for holding 
their tongues out of it and doing something ; we 
shall pay our ploughman a little more, and our law- 
yer a little less, and so on : but, at least, we may even 
now take care that whatever work is done shall be 
fully paid for ; and the man who does it paid for 
it, not somebody else ; and that it shall be done 
in an orderly, soldierly, well-guided, wholesome 



WORK. 



51 



way, under good captains and lieutenants of labor ; 
and that it shall have its appointed times of rest, 
and enough of them ; and that in those times the 
play shall be wholesome play, not in theatrical 
gardens, with tin flowers and gas sunshine, and 
girls dancing because of their misery • but in true 
gardens, with real flowers, and real sunshine, and 
children dancing because of their gladness ; so 
that truly the streets shall be full (the ''streets," 
mind you, not the gutters) of children, playing in 
the midst thereof. We may take care that work- 
ing men shall have at least as good books to read 
as anybody else, when they've time to read them ; 
and as comfortable firesides to sit at as anybody 
else, when they've time to sit at them. This, I 
think, can be managed for you, my laborious 
friends, in the good time. 

IV. I must go on, however, to our last head, 
concerning ourselves all, as workers. What is 
wise work, and what is foolish work ? What the 
difference between sense and nonsense, in daily 
occupation ? 

There are three tests of wise work: — that it 
must be honest, useful, and cheerful. 

I. It is HONEST. I hardly know anything more 
strange than that you recognize honesty in play, 
and you do not in work. In your lightest games, 
you have always some one to see what you call 
"fair-play." In boxing, you must hit fair; in 
racing, start fair. Your English watchword is 
" fair-//^_y," your English hatred, '' {ou\-pIay.'^ 
Did it never strike you that you wanted another 
watchword also, *^ ia.\x-work,'' and another and 



52 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE, 



bitterer hatred — ^^ iovX-work^' "> Your prize- 
fighter has some honor in him yet ; and so have 
the men in the ring round him : they will judge 
him to lose the match, by foul hitting. But your 
prize-merchant gains his match by foul selling, 
and no one cries out against that. You drive a 
gambler out of the gambling-room who loads 
dice, but you leave a tradesman in flourishing 
business who loads scales ! For observe, all dis- 
honest dealing is loading scales. What difference 
does it make whether I get short weight, adul- 
terate substance, or dishonest fabric ? — unless that 
flaw in the substance or fabric is the worse evil of 
the two. Give me short measure of food, and I 
only lose by you ; but give me adulterate food, 
and I die by you. Here, then, is your chief duty, 
you workmen and tradesmen — to be true to your- 
selves, and to us who would help you. We can 
do nothing for you, nor you for yourselves, with- 
out honesty. Get that, you get all ; without that, 
your suff'rages, your reforms, your free-trade 
measures, your institutions of science, are all in 
vain. It is useless to put your heads together, if 
you can't put your hearts together. Shoulder to 
shoulder, right hand to right hand, among your- 
selves, and no wrong hand to anybody else, and 
you'll win the world yet. 

II. Then, secondly, wise work is useful. No 
man minds, or ought to mind, its being hard, if 
only it comes to something ; but when it is hard, 
and comes to nothing ; when all our bees' busi- 
ness turns to spiders' ; and for honey-comb we 
have only resultant cobweb, blown away by the 



WORK. 53 

next breeze — that is the cruel thing for the 
worker. Yet do we ever ask ourselves, person- 
ally, or even nationally, whether our work is com- 
ing to anything or not? We don't care to keep 
what has been nobly done ; still less do we care to 
do nobly what others would keep ; and, least of 
all, to make the work itself useful instead of 
deadly to the doer, so as to exert his life indeed, 
but not to waste it. Of all wastes, the greatest 
waste that you can commit is the waste of labor. 
If you went down in the morning into your dairy, 
and found that your youngest child had got down 
before you, and that he and the cat were at play 
together, and that he had poured out all the 
cream on the floor for the cat to lap up, you 
would scold the child, and be sorry the cream 
was wasted. But if, instead of wooden bowls 
with milk in them, there are golden bowls with 
human life in them, and instead of the cat to play 
with — the devil to play with ; and you yourself 
the player; and instead of leaving that golden 
bowl to be broken by God at the fountain, you 
break it in the dust yourself, and pour the human 
life out on the ground for the fiend to lick up — 
that is no waste ! 

What ! you perhaps think, *'to waste the labor 
of men is not to kill them." Is it not? I should 
like to know how you could kill them more 
utterly — kill them with second deaths, seventh 
deaths, hundredfold deaths? It is the slightest 
way of killing to stop a man's breath. Nay, the 
hunger, and the cold, and the whistling bullets — 
our love-messengers between nation and nation — 



54 



THE CROWN- OF WILD OLIVE. 



have brought pleasant messages to many a man 
before now; orders of sweet release, and leave 
at last to go where he will be most welcome 
and most happy. At the worst you do but shorten 
his life, you do not corrupt his life. But if you 
put him to base labor, if you bind his thoughts, 
if you blind his eyes, if you blunt his hopes, if 
you steal his joys, if you stunt his body, and 
blast his soul, and at last leave him not so much 
as strength to reap the poor fruit of his degrada- 
tion, but gather that for yourself, and dismiss 
him to the grave, when you have done with him, 
having, so far as in you lay, made the walls of 
that grave everlasting ; (though, indeed, I fancy 
the goodly bricks of some of our family vaults 
will hold closer in the resurrection day than the 
sod over the laborer's head), this you think is 
no waste and no sin ! 

III. Then, lastly, wise work is cheerful, as a 
child's work is. And now I want you to take 
one thought home with you, and let it stay with 
you. 

Everybody in this room has been taught to 
pray daily, ''Thy kingdom come." Now, if we 
hear a man swear in the streets, we think it very 
wrong, and say he ''takes God's name in vain." 
But there's a twenty times worse way of taking 
His name in vain, than that. It is to ask God 
for what 7ve don't want. He doesn't like that 
sort of prayer. If you don't want a thing, don't 
ask for it : such asking is the worst mockery of 
your King you can insult Him with ; the soldiers 
striking: Him on the head with the reed was 



WORK. 



55 



nothing to that. If you do not wish for His 
kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you 
must do more than pray for it ; you must work 
for it. And, to work for it, you must know what 
it is : we have all prayed for it many a day with- 
out thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom that is to 
come to us; we are not to go to it. Also, it is 
not to be a kingdom of the dead, but of the liv- 
ing. Also, it is not to come all at once, but 
quietly ; nobody knows how. " The kingdom of 
God Cometh not with observation." Also, it is 
not to come outside of us, but in our hearts : '*the 
kingdom of God is within you." And, being 
within us, it is not a thing to be seen, but to be 
felt ; and though it brings all substance of good 
with it, it does not consist in that : '^ the kingdom 
of God is not meat and drink, but righteousness, 
peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost: " joy, that is 
to say, in the holy, healthful, and helpful Spirit. 
Now, if we want to work for this kingdom, and 
to bring it, and enter into it, there's one curious 
condition to be first accepted. You must enter 
It as children, or not at all ; ''Whosoever will not 
receive it as a little child shall not enter therein." 
And again, ''Suffer little children to come unto 
me, and forbid them not, for of such is the king- 
dom of heaven y * 

Of such, observe. Not of children themselves, 
but of such as children. I believe most mothers 
who read that text think that all heaven or the earth 



* I have referred oftener to the words of the English Bible in this 
lecture than in any other of my addresses, because I was here speaking 
to an audience which professed to accept its authority implicitly. 



56 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

— when it gets to be like heaven — ^^is to be full of 
babies. But that's not so. ** Length of days, 
and long life and peace," that is the blessing, not 
to die, still less to live, in babyhood. It is the 
character of children we want, and must gain at 
our peril ; let us see, briefly, in what it consists. 

The first character of right childhood is that it 
is Modest. A well-bred child does not think it 
can teach its parents, or that it knows everything. 
It may think its father and mother know every- 
thing, — perhaps that all grown-up people know 
everything ; very certainly it is sure that // does 
not. And it is always asking questions, and 
wanting to know more. Well, that is the first 
character of a good and wise man at his work. 
To know that he knows very little ; — to perceive 
that there are many above him wiser than he ; and 
to be always asking questions, wanting to learn, 
not to teach. No one ever teaches well who 
wants to teach, or governs well who wants to 
govern ; it is an old saying (Plato's, but I know 
not if his, first), and as wise as old. 

Then, the second character of right childhood 
is to be Faithful. Perceiving that its father 
knows best what is good for it, and having found 
always, when it has tried its own way against his, 
that he was right and it was wrong, a noble child 
trusts him at last wholly, gives him its hand, and 
will walk blindfold with him, if he bids it. And 
that is the true character of all good men also, as 
obedient workers, or soldiers under captains. 
They must trust their captains ; — they are bound 
for their lives to choose none but those whom they 



WORK. 57 

can trust. Then, they are not always to be think- 
ing that what seems strange to them, or wrong in 
what they are desired to do, is strange or wrong. 
They know their captain : where he leads they 
must follow, — what he bids, they must do; and 
without this trust and faith, without this captain- 
ship and soldiership, no great deed, no great sal- 
vation, is possible to man. 

Then the third character of right childhood is 
to be Loving. Give a little love to a child, and 
you get a great deal back. It loves everything 
near it, when it is a right kind of child ; would 
hurt nothing, would give the best it has away, 
always, if you need it ; does not lay plans for get- 
ting everything m the house for itself, and de- 
lights in helping people ; you cannot please it so 
much as by giving it a chance of being useful, in 
ever so humble a way. 

And because of all these characters, lastly, it 
is Cheerful. Putting its trust in its father, it is 
careful for nothing — being full of love to every 
creature, it is happy always, whether in its play or 
in its duty. Well, that's the great worker's char- 
acter also. Taking no thought for the morrow ; 
taking thought only for the duty of the day; 
trusting somebody else to take care of to-morrow ; 
knowing indeed what labor is, but not what sor- 
row is ; and always ready for play — beautiful play. 
For lovely human play is like the play of the Sun. 
There's a worker for you. He, steady to his 
time, is set as a strong man to run his course, but 
also, he rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course. 
See how he plays in the morning, with the mists 



58 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 



below, and the clouds above, with a ray here and 
a flash there, and a shower of jewels everywhere ; 
— that's the Sun's play; and great human play is 
like his — all various — all full of light and life, and 
tender, as the dew of the morning. 

So then, you have the child's character in these 
four things — Humility, Faith, Charity, and Cheer- 
fulness. That's what you have got to be converted 
to. '' Except ye be converted and become as little 
children." — You hear much of conversion nowa- 
days ; but people always seem to think they have 
got to be made wretched by conversion — to be 
converted to long faces. No, friends, you have 
got to be converted to short ones ; you have to 
repent into childhood, to repent into delight, and 
delightsomeness. You can't go into a conventicle 
but you'll hear plenty of talk of backsliding. 
Backsliding, indeed ! I can tell you, on the ways 
most of us go, the faster we slide back the better. 
Slide back into the cradle, if going on is into the 
grave: — back, I tell you: back — out of your long 
faces, and into your long clothes. It is among 
children only, and as children only, that you will 
find medicine for your healing and true wisdom 
for your teaching. There is poison in the coun- 
sels of the men of this world ; the words they 
speak are all bitterness, '' the poison of asps is 
under their lips," but, ''the sucking child shall 
play by the hole of the asp." There is death in 
the looks of men. -''Their eyes are privily set 
against the poor; " they are as the uncharmable 
serpent, the cockatrice, which slew by seeing. 
But " the weaned child shall lay his hand on the 



WORK. 



59 



cockatrice den." There is death in the steps of 
men: *^ their feet are swift to shed blood; they 
have compassed us in our steps like the lion that is 
greedy of his prey, and the young lion lurking in 
secret places;" but, in that kingdom, the wolf 
shall lie down with the lamb, and the fatling with 
the lion, and *'a little child shall lead them." 
There is death in the thoughts of men : the world 
is one wide riddle to them, darker and darker as 
it draws to a close ; but the secret of it is known 
to the child, and the Lord of heaven and earth is 
most to be thanked in that ** He has hidden these 
things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed 
them unto babes." Yes, and there is death — in- 
finitude of death in the principalities and powers 
of men. As far as the east is from the west, so 
far our sins are — not set from us, but multiplied 
around us : the Sun himself, think you he now 
''rejoices" to run his course, when he plunges 
westward to the horizon, so widely red, not with 
clouds, but blood? And it will be red more 
widely yet. Whatever drought of the early and 
latter rain may be, there will be none of that red 
rain. You fortify yourselves, you arm yourselves 
against it in vain ; the enemy and avenger will be 
upon you also, unless you learn that it is not out 
of the mouths of the knitted gun, or the smoothed 
rifle, but '*out of the mouths of babes and suck- 
lings " that the strength is ordained, which shall 
** still the enemy and avenger." 



TRAFFIC 



(6i) 



TRAFFIC. 



63 



TRAFFIC. 

My good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down 
here among your hills that I might talk to you 
about this Exchange you are going to build : but 
earnestly and seriously asking you to pardon me, 
I am going to do nothing of the kind. I cannot 
talk, or at least can say very little, about this same 
Exchange. I must talk of quite other things, 
though not willingly ; — I could not deserve your 
pardon, if when you invited me to speak on one 
subject, I ivilfully spoke on another. But I can- 
not speak, to purpose, of anything about which I 
do not care ; and most simply and sorrowfully I 
have to tell you, in the outset, that I do not care 
about this Exchange of yours. 

If, however, when you sent me your invitation, 
I had answered, ''I won't come, I don't care 
about the Exchange of Bradford," you would have 
been justly offended with me, not knowing the 
reasons of so blunt a carelessness. So I have 
come down, hoping that you will patiently let me 
tell you why, on this, and many other such occa- 
sions, I now remain silent, when formerly I should 
have caught at the opportunity of speaking to a 
gracious audience. 

In a word, then, I do not care about this Ex- 
change, — because you don't; and because you 
know perfectly well I cannot make you. Look at 



64 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

the essential conditions of the case, which you, as 
business men, know perfectly well, though per- 
haps you think I forget them. You are going to 
spend ;^3o,ooo, which to you, collectively, is 
nothing; the buying a new coat is, as to the cost 
of it, a much more important matter of considera- 
tion to me than building a new Exchange is to 
you. But you think you may as well have the 
right thing for your money. You know there are 
a great many odd styles of architecture about ; you 
don't want to do anything ridiculous; you hear 
of me, among others, as a respectable architectural 
man-milliner ; and you send for me, that I may 
tell you the leading fashion ; and what is, in our 
shops, for the moment, the newest and sweetest 
thing in pinnacles. 

Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you 
cannot have good architecture merely by asking 
people's advice on occasion. All good architec- 
ture is the expression of national life and charac- 
ter ; and it is produced by a prevalent and eager 
national taste, or desire for beauty. And I want 
you to think a little of the deep significance of 
this word " taste ; " for no statement of mine has 
been more earnestly or oftener controverted than 
that good taste is essentially a moral quality. 
*' No," say many of my antagonists, " taste is one 
thing, morality is another. Tell us what is pretty : 
we shall be glad to know that ; but w^e need no 
sermons even were you able to preach them, which 
may be doubted." 

Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma 
of mine somewhat. Taste is not only a part and 



TRAFFIC. 



65 



an index of morality — it is the only morality. 
The first, and last, and closest trial question to 
any living creature is, ''What do you like?" 
Tell me what you like, and I'll tell you what you 
are. Go out mto the street, and ask the first man 
or woman you meet, what their "taste" is, and 
if they answer candidly, you know them, body 
and soul. ''You, my friend in the rags, with the 
unsteady gait, what ^o you like?" ''A pipe and 
a quartern of gin." I know you. ''You, good 
woman, with the quick step and tidy bonnet, what 
do you like ? " "A swept hearth and a clean tea- 
table, and my husband opposite me, and a baby at 
my breast." Good, I know you also. "You, 
little girl with the golden hair and the soft eyes, 
what do you like?" "My canary, and a run 
among the wood hyacinths." " You^ little boy 
with the dirty hands and the low forehead, what 
do you like?" "A shy at the sparrows, and a 
game at pitch farthing." Good; we know them 
all now. What more need we ask? 

" Nay," perhaps you answer: " we need rather 
to ask what these people and children do, than 
what they like. If they do right, it is no matter 
that they like what is wrong ; and if they do wrong, 
it is no matter that they like what is right. Doing 
is the great thing; and it does not matter that the 
man likes drinking, so that he does not drink ; nor 
that the little girl likes to be kind to her canary, 
if she will not learn her lessons; nor that the 
little boy likes throwing stones at the sparrows, if 
he goes to the Sunday School." Indeed, for a 
short time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. 

5 



66 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

For if, resolutely, people do what is right, in time 
they come to like doing it. But they only are in 
a right moral state when they have come to like 
doing it ; and as long as they don't like it, they 
are still in a vicious state. The man is not in 
health of body who is always thinking of the bot- 
tle in the cupboard, though he bravely bears his 
thirst ; but the man who heartily enjoys water in 
the morning and wine in the evening, each in its 
proper quantity and time. And the entire object 
of true education is to make people not merely do 
the right things, but enjoy the right things — not 
merely industrious, but to love industry — not 
merely learned, but to love knowledge — not 
merely pure, but to love purity — not merely just, 
but to hunger and thirst after justice. 

But you may answer or think, '*Is the liking 
for outside ornaments, — for pictures, or statues, or 
furniture, or architecture, — a moral quality?" 
Yes, most surely, if a rightly set liking. Taste for 
any pictures or statues is not a moral quality, but 
taste for good ones is. Only here again we have 
to define the word ''good." I don't mean by 
"good," clever — or learned — or difficult in the 
doing. Take a picture by Teniers, of sots quar- 
relling over their dice : it is an entirely clever 
picture ; so clever that nothing in its kind has ever 
been done equal to it \ but it is also an entirely 
base and evil picture. It is an expression of de- 
light in the prolonged contemplation of a vile 
thing, and delight in that is an ''unmannered," 
or "immoral" quality. It is "bad taste" in 
the profoundest sense — it is the taste of the devils. 



TRAFFIC. e^ 

On the other hand, a picture of Titian's, or a 
Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner land- 
scape, expresses delight in the perpetual contem- 
plation of a good and perfect thing. That is an 
entirely moral quality — it is the taste of the an- 
gels. And all delight in fine art, and all love of 
it, resolve themselves into simple love of that 
which deserves love. That deserving is the quality 
which we call ''loveliness" — (we ought to have 
an opposite word, hateliness, to be said of the 
things which deserve to be hated) ] and it is not 
an indifferent nor optional thing whether we love 
this or that ; but it is just the vital function of all 
our being. What we like determines what we are, 
and is the sign of what we are ; and to teach taste 
is inevitably to form character. 

As I was thinking over this, in walking up Fleet 
Street the other day, my eye caught the title of 
a book standing open in a book-seller's window. 
It was — " On the necessity of the diffusion of taste 
among all classes." "Ah," I thought to myself, 
*' my classifying friend, when you have diffused 
your taste, where will your classes be? The man 
who likes what you like, belongs to the same class 
with you, I think. Inevitably so. You may put 
him to other work if you choose ; but, by the 
condition you have brought him into, he will dis- 
like the other work as much as you would your- 
self. You get hold of a scavenger, or a coster- 
monger, who enjoyed the Newgate Calendar for 
literature, and " Pop goes the Weasel " for music. 
You think you can make him like Dante and 
Beethoven ? I wish you joy of your lessons ; but 



68 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

if you do, you have made a gentleman of him : — 
he won't like to go back to his costermonger- 
ing." 

And so completely and unexceptionally is this 
so, that, if I had time to-night, I could show you 
that a nation cannot be affected by any vice, or 
weakness, without expressing it, legibly, and for- 
ever, either in bad art, or by want of art ; and 
that there is no national virtue, small or great, 
which is not manifestly expressed in all the art 
which circumstances enable the people possessing 
that virtue to produce. Take, for instance, your 
great English virtue of enduring and patient 
courage. You have at present in England only one 
art of any consequence — that is, iron-working. 
You know thorouglily well how to cast and ham- 
mer iron. Now, do you think in those masses of 
lava which you build volcanic cones to melt, and 
which you forge at the mouths of the Infernos 
you have created ; do you think, on those iron 
plates, your courage and endurance are not writ- 
ten forever — not merely with an iron pen, but 
on iron parchment? And take also your great 
English vice — European vice — vice of all the 
world — vice of all other worlds that roll or shine 
in heaven, bearing with them yet the atmosphere 
of hell — the vice of jealousy, which brings com- 
petition into your commerce, treachery into your 
councils, and dishonor into your wars — that vice 
which has rendered for you, and for your next 
neighboring nation, the daily occupations of ex- 
istence no longer possible, but with the mail 
upon your breasts and the sword loose in its 



TRAFFIC. 



69 



sheath ; so that at last, you have realized for all 
the multitudes of the two great peoples who lead 
the so-called civilization of the earth, — you have 
realized for them all, I say, in person and in 
policy, what was once true only of the rough 
Border riders of your Cheviot hills — 

" They carved at the meal 

With gloves of steel, 

And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd ; " — 

do you think that this national shame and das- 
tardliness of heart are not written as legibly on 
every rivet of your iron armor as the strength of 
the right hands that forged it? 

Friends, I know not whether this thing be the 
more ludicrous or the more melancholy. It is 
quite unspeakably both. Suppose, instead of 
being now sent for by you, I had been sent for 
by some private gentleman, living in a suburban 
house, with his garden separated only by a fruit- 
wall from his next door neighbor's; and he had 
called me to consult with him on the furnishing 
of his drawing room. I begin looking about me, 
and find the walls rather bare ; I think such and 
such a paper might be desirable — perhaps a little 
fresco here and there on the ceiling — a damask 
curtain or so at the windows. "Ah," says my 
employer, "damask curtains, indeed ! That's all 
very fine, but you know I can't afford that kind 
of thing just now!" "Yet the world credits 
you with a splendid income ! " " Ah, yes," says 
my friend, "but do you know, at present, I am 



^O THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

obliged to spend it nearly all in steel-traps?" 
'' Steel-traps ! for whom ? " '' Why, for that fel- 
low on the other side the wall, you know: we're 
very good friends, capital friends ; but we are 
■obliged to keep our traps set on both sides of the 
wall ; we could not possibly keep on friendly 
terms without them, and our spring guns. The 
worst of it is, we are both clever fellows enough ; 
and there's never a day passes that we don't find 
out a new trap, or a new gun-barrel, or some- 
thing ; we spend about fifteen millions a year 
•each in our traps, take it all together ; and I 
don't see how we're to do with less." A highly 
comic state of life for two private gentlemen ! 
but for two nations, it seems to me, not wholly 
comic? Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if 
there were only one madman in it ; and your 
Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is 
only one clown in it ; but when the whole world 
turns clown, and paints itself red with its own 
heart's blood instead of vermilion, it is some- 
thing else than comic, I think. 

Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, and 
willingly allow for that. You don't know what 
to do with yourselves for a sensation : fox-hunting 
and cricketing will not carry you through the 
whole of this unendurably long mortal life : you 
liked pop-guns when you were schoolboys, and 
rifles and Armstrongs are only the same things 
better made : but then the worst of it is, that 
what was play to you when boys, was not play to 
the sparrows ; and what is play to you now, is 
not play to the small birds of State neither ; and 



TRAFFIC. 



71 



for the black eagles, you are somewhat shy of 
taking shots at them, if I mistake not. 

I must get back to the matter in hand, how- 
ever. Believe me, without farther instance, I 
could show you, in all time, that every nation's 
vice, or virtue, was written in its art : the soldier- 
ship of early Greece; the sensuality of late Italy; 
the visionary religion of Tuscany ; the splendid 
human energy and beauty of Venice. I have no 
time to do this to-night (I have done it elsewhere 
before now) ; but I proceed to apply the principle 
to ourselves in a more searching manner. 

I notice that among all the new buildings 
which cover your once wild hills, churches and 
schools are mixed in due, that is to say, in large 
proportion, with your mills and mansions ; and I 
notice also that the churches and schools are al- 
most always Gothic, and the mansions and mills 
are never Gothic. Will you allow me to ask 
precisely the meaning of this? For, remeniber, 
it is peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When 
Gothic was invented, houses were Gothic as well 
as churches ; and when the Italian style super- 
seded the Gothic, churches were Italian as well as 
houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the cathe- 
dral of Antwerp, there is a Gothic belfry to the 
Hotel de Ville at Brussels ; if Inigo Jones builds 
an Italian Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds 
an Italian St. Paul's. But now you live under 
one school of architecture, and worship under 
another. What do you mean by doing this ? 
Am I to understand that you are thinking of 
changing your architecture back to Gothic ; and 



72 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

that you treat your churches experimentally, be- 
cause it does not matter what mistakes you make 
in a church ? Or am I to understand that you 
consider Gothic a pre-eminently sacred and 
beautiful mode of building, which you think, 
like the fine frankincense, should be mixed for 
the tabernacle only, and reserved for your re- 
ligious services? For if this be the feeling, 
though it may seem at first as if it were graceful 
and reverent, at the root of the matter, it signifies 
neither more nor less than that you have sepa- 
rated your religion from your life. 

For consider what a wide significance this fact 
has ; and remember that it is not you only, but 
all the people of England, who are behaving thus 
just now. 

You have all got into the habit of calling the 
church "the house of God." I have seen, over 
the doors of many churches, the legend actually 
carved, ''This is the house of God, and this is 
the gate of heaven." Now, note where that 
legend comes from, and of what place it was 
first spoken. A boy leaves his father's house to go 
on a long journey on foot, to visit his uncle ; he 
has to cross a wild hill-desert ; just as if one of 
your own boys had to cross the wolds to visit an 
uncle at Carlisle. The second or third day your 
boy finds himself somewhere between Hawes and 
Brough, in the midst of the moors, at sunset. It 
is stony ground, and boggy; he cannot go one 
foot farther that night. Down he lies, to sleep, 
on Wharnside, where best he may, gathering a 
few of the stones together to put under his head ; — 



TRAFFIC. 73 

SO wild the place is, he cannot get anything but 
stones. And there, lying under the broad night, 
he has a dream ; and he sees a ladder set up on 
the earth, and the top of it reaches to heaven, 
and the angels of God are seen ascending and 
descending upon it. And when he wakes out of 
his sleep, he says, '' How dreadful is this place; 
surely, this is none other than the house of God, 
and this is the gate of heaven." This place, 
observe ; not this church ; not this city ; not this 
stone, even, which he puts up for a memorial — 
the piece of flint on which his head has lain. 
But this //^^<?/ this windy slope of Wharnside; 
this moorland hollow, torrent-bitten, snow- 
blighted ; this any place where God lets down the 
ladder. And how are you to know where that 
will be ? or how are you to determine where it 
may be, but by being ready for it always? Do 
you know where the lightning is to fall next ? 
You do know that, partly; you can guide the 
lightning ; but you cannot guide the going forth 
of the Spirit, which is as that lightning when it 
shines from the east to the west. 

But the perpetual and insolent warping of that 
strong verse to serve a merely ecclesiastical pur- 
pose, is only one of the thousand instances in 
which we sink back into gross Judaism. We call 
our churches "temples." Now, you know per- 
fectly well they are not temples. They have never 
had, never can have, anything whatever to do with 
temples. They are *' synagogues " — ''gathering 
places " — where you gather yourselves together as 
an assembly ; and by not calling them so, you again 



74 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

miss the force of another mighty text — ''Thou, 
when thou prayest, shalt not be as the hypocrites 
are; for they love to pray standing in the churches ^^ 
[we should translate it], '' that they may be seen of 
men. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into 
thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, 
pray to thy Father," — which is, not in chancel 
nor in aisle, but "in secret." 

Now, you feel, as I say this to you — I know 
you feel — as if I were trying to take away the 
honor of your churches. Not so ; I am trying to 
prove to you the honor of your houses and your 
hills ; not that the Church is not sacred — but that 
the whole Earth is. I would have you feel, what 
careless, what constant, what infectious sin there 
is in all modes of thought, whereby, in calling 
your churches only '' holy," you call your heai^ths 
and homes *' profane ; " and have separated your- 
selves from the heathen by casting all your house- 
hold gods to the ground, instead of recognizing, 
in the place of their many and feeble Lares, the 
presence of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar. 

'' But what has all this to do with our Ex- 
change ? ' ' you ask me, impatiently. My dear 
friends, it has just everything to do with it ; on 
these inner and great questions depend all the 
outer and little ones; and if you have asked me 
down here to speak to you, because you had be- 
fore been interested in anything I have written, 
you must know that all I have yet said about 
architecture was to show this. The book I 
called ''The Seven Lamps" was to show that 
certain right states of temper and moral feeling 



TRAFFIC. 



75 



were the magic powers by which all good archi- 
tecture, without exception, had been produced. 
" The Stones of Venice " had, from beginning to 
end, no other aim than to show that the Gothic 
architecture of Venice had arisen out of, and in- 
dicated in all its features, a state of pure national 
faith, and of domestic virtue ; and that its 
Renaissance architecture had arisen out of, and in 
all its features indicated, a state of concealed 
national infidelity, and of domestic corruption. 
And now, you ask me what style is best to 
build in ; and how can I answer, knowing the 
meaning of the two styles, but by another ques- 
tion — do you mean to build as Christians or as 
Infidels ? And still more — do you mean to build 
as honest Christians or as honest Infidels? as 
thoroughly and confessedly either one or the 
other? You don't like to be asked such rude 
questions. I cannot help it ; they are of much 
more importance than this Exchange business ; 
and if they can be at once answered, the Ex- 
change business settles itself in a moment. But, 
before I press them farther, I must ask leave to 
explain one point clearly. 

In all my past work, my endeavor has been to 
show that good architecture is essentially religious 
— the production of a faithful and virtuous, not 
of an infidel and corrupted people. But in the 
course of doing this, I have had also to show that 
good architecture is not ecclesiastical. People are 
so apt to look upon religion as the business of the 
clergy, not their own, that the moment they hear 
of anything depending on ''religion," they think 



76 THE CROV/N OF WILD OLIVE. 

it must also have depended on the priesthood ; 
and I have had to take what place was to be occu- 
pied between these two errors, and fight both, 
often with seeming contradiction. Good archi- 
tecture is the work of good and believing men ; 
therefore, you say, at least some people say, 
*' Good architecture must essentially have been the 
work of the clergy, not of the laity." No — a 
thousand times no; good architecture* has 
always been the work of the commonalty, not of 
the clergy. What, you say, those glorious cathe- 
drals — the pride of Europe — did their builders not 
form Gothic architecture? No; they corrupted 
Gothic architecture. Gothic was formed in the 
baron's castle, and the burgher's street. It was 
formed by the thoughts, and hands, and pov/ers 
of free citizens and warrior kings. By the monk 
it was used as an instrument for the aid of his su- 
perstition ; when that superstition became a beau- 
tiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe vain- 
ly dreamed and pined in the cloister, and vainly 
raged and perished in the crusade — through that 
fury of perverted faith and wasted war, the Gothic 
rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, 
most foolish dreams ; and, in those dreams, was 
lost. 

I hope, now, that there is no risk of your mis- 
understanding me when I come to the gist of what 
I want to say to-night ; — when I repeat, that every 
great national architecture has been the result and 
exponent of a great national religion. You can't 

*And all other arts, for the most part ; even of incredulous and secu- 
larly-minded commonalities. 



TRAFFIC, 



77 



have bits of it here, bits there — you must have it 
everywhere, or nowhere. It is not the monopoly 
of a clerical company — it is not the exponent of 
a theological dogma — it is not the hieroglyphic 
writing of an initiated priesthood ; it is the manly 
language of a people inspired by resolute and 
common purpose, and rendering resolute and 
common fidelity to the legible laws of an un- 
doubted God. 

Now, there have as yet been three distinct 
schools of European architecture. I say, Euro- 
pean, because Asiatic and African architectures 
belong so entirely to other races and climates, 
that there is no question of them here ; only, in 
passing, I will simply assure you that whatever is 
good or great in Egypt, and Syria, and India, is 
just good or great for the same reasons as the 
buildings on our side of the Bosphorus. We 
Europeans, then, have had three great religions: 
the Greek, which was the worship of the God of 
Wisdom and Power; the Mediaeval, which was 
the worship of the God of Judgment and Conso- 
lation ; the Renaissance, which was the worship 
of the God of Pride and Beauty; these three we 
have had — they are past, — and now, at last, we 
English have got a fourth religion, and a God of 
our own, about which I want to ask you. But I 
must explain these three old ones first. 

I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped 
the God of Wisdom ; so that whatever contended 
against their religion, — to the Jews a stumbling 
block, — was, to the Greeks — Foolishness. 

The first Greek idea of Deity was that expressed 



78 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

in the word, of which we keep the remnant in our 
words "Z^Z-urnal" and ''Z>/-vine" — the god of 
Day, Jupiter the revealer. Athena is his daugh- 
ter, but especially daughter of the Intellect, 
springing armed from the head. We are only 
with the help of recent investigation beginning to 
penetrate the depth of meaning couched under 
the Athenaic symbols : but I may note rapidly, 
that her aegis, the mantle with the serpent fringes, 
in which she often, in the best statues, is repre- 
sented as folding up her left hand for better guard, 
and the Gorgon on her shield, are both represent- 
ative mainly of the chilling horror and sadness 
(turning men to stone, as it were,) of the outmost 
and superficial spheres of knowledge — that knowl- 
edge which separates, in bitterness, hardness, and 
sorrow, the heart of the full-grown man from the 
heart of the child. For out of imperfect knowl- 
edge spring terror, dissension, danger, and dis- 
dain ; but from perfect knowledge, given by the 
full-revealed Athena, strength and peace, in sign 
of which she is crowned with the olive spray, and 
bears the resistless spear. 

This, then, was the Greek conception of purest 
Deity, and every habit of life, and every form of 
his art developed themselves from the seeking 
this bright, serene, resistless wisdom \ and setting 
himself, as a man, to do things evermore riglitly 
and strongly ; * not with any ardent affection or 

* It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, was 
chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of Rightness and Strength, 
founded on Forethought : the principal character of Greek art is not 
Beauty, but design : and the Dorian Apollo-worship and Athenian Vir- 
gin-worship are both expressions of adoration of divine Wisdom and 



TRAFFIC. 



79 



ultimate hope ; but with a resolute and continent 
energy of will, as knowing that for failure there 
was no consolation, and for sin there was no re- 
mission. And the Greek architecture rose unerr- 
ing, bright, clearly defined, and self-contained. 

Next followed in Europe the great Christian 
faith, which was essentially the religion of Com- 
fort. Its great doctrine is the remission of sins ; 
for which cause it happens, too often, in certain 
phases of Christianity, that sin and sickness them- 
selves are partly glorified, as if, the more you had 
to be healed of, the more divine was the healing. 
The practical result of this doctrine, in art, is a 
continual contemplation of sin and disease, and 
of imaginary states of purification from them ;. 
thus we have an architecture conceived in a min- 
gled sentiment of melancholy and aspiration, 
partly severe, partly luxuriant, which will bend 
itself to every one of our needs, and every one of 
our fancies, and be strong or weak with us, as we 
are strong or weak ourselves. It is, of all archi- 
tecture, the basest, when base people build it — 
of all, the noblest, when built by the noble. 

And now note that both these religions — Greek 
and Mediaeval — perished by falsehood in their 
own main purpose. The Greek religion of Wis- 
dom perished in a false philosophy — '' Oppositions 
of science, falsely so called." The Mediaeval 
religion of Consolation perished in false comfort j 

Purity. Next to these great deities rank, in power over the national 
mind, Dionysus and Ceres, the givers of human strength and life : then, 
for heroic example, Hercules. There is no Venus-worship among the 
Greeks in the great times : and the Muses are essentially teachers of 
Truth, and of its harmonies. Compare Aratra Pentelici, § 200. 



So THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

in remission of sins given lyingly. It was the 
selling of absolution that ended the Mediaeval 
faith; and I can tell you more, it is the selling of 
absolution which, to the end of time, will mark 
false Christianity. Pure Christianity gives her 
remission of sins only by ending them ; but false 
Christianity gets her remission of sins by com- 
pou7iding for them. And there are many ways 
of compounding for them. We English have 
beautiful little quiet ways of buying absolution, 
whether in low Church or high, far more cunning 
than any of Tetzel's trading. 

Then, thirdly, there followed the religion of 
Pleasure, in which all Europe gave itself to luxury, 
ending in death. First, bals masques in every 
saloon, and then guillotines in every square. And 
all these three worships issue in vast temple build- 
ing. Your Greek worshipped Wisdom, and built 
you the Parthenon — the Virgin's temple. The 
Mediaeval worshipped Consolation, and built you 
Virgin temples also — but to our Lady of Salva- 
tion. Then the Revivalist worshipped beauty, of 
a sort, and built you Versailles, and the Vatican. 
Now, lastly, will you tell me what we worship, 
and what we build ? 

You know we are speaking always of the real, 
active, continual, national worship; that by which 
men act while they live; not that which they talk 
of when they die. Now, we have, indeed, a 
nominal religion, to which we pay tithes of prop- 
erty and sevenths of time; but we have also a 
practical and earnest religion, to which we devote 
nine-tenths of our property and sixth-sevenths of 



TRAFFIC. 8r 

our time. And we dispute a great deal about the 
nominal religion ; but we are all unanimous about 
this practical one, of which I think you will 
admit that the ruling goddess may be best gen- 
erally described as the " Goddess of Getting-on," 
or '^Britannia of the Market." The Athenians 
had an " Athena Agoraia," or Athena of the Mar- 
ket ; but she was a subordinate type of their god- 
dess, while our Britannia Agoraia is the principal 
type of ours. And all your great architectural 
works are, of course, built to her. It is long 
since you built a great cathedral ; and how you 
would laugh at me, if I proposed building a 
cathedral on the top of one of these hills of 
yours, to make it an Acropolis ! But your rail- 
road mounds, vaster than the walls of Babylon ; 
your railroad stations, vaster than the temple of 
Ephesus, and innumerable ; your chimneys how 
much more mighty and costly than cathedral 
spires ! your harbor piers ; your warehouses ; your 
exchanges ! — all these are built to your great 
Goddess of ^' Getting-on ; " and she has formed, 
and will continue to form, your architecture, as 
long as you worship her ; and it is quite vain to 
ask me to tell you how to build Xohei- ; you know 
far better than I. 

There might indeed, on some theories, be a 
conceivably good architecture for Exchanges — 
that is to say, if there were any heroism in the 
fact or deed of exchange, which might be typi- 
cally carved on the outside of your building. 
For, you know, all beautiful architecture must be 
adorned with sculpture or painting; and for 
6 



82 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

sculpture or painting, you must have a subject. 
And hitherto it has been a received opinion 
among the nations of the world that the only- 
right subjects for either, were heroisjus of some 
sort. Even on his pots and his flagons, the Greek 
put a Hercules slaying lions, or an Apollo slaying 
serpents, or Bacchus slaying melancholy giants, and 
earth-born despondencies. On his temples, the 
Greek put contests of great warriors in founding 
states, or of gods with evil spirits. On his houses 
and temples alike, the Christian put carvings of 
angels conquering devils ; or of hero-martyrs 
exchanging this world for another ; subject inap- 
propriate, I think, to our direction of exchange 
here. And the Master of Christians not only 
left his followers without any orders as to the 
sculpture of affairs of exchange on the outside of 
buildings, but gave some strong evidence of 
his dislike of affairs of exchange within them. 
And yet there might surely be a heroism in such 
affairs ; and all commerce become a kind of sell- 
ing of doves, not impious. The wonder has 
always been great to me, that heroism has never 
been supposed to be in anywise consistent with 
the practice of supplying people with food, or 
clothes; but rather with that of quartering one's 
self upon them for food, and stripping them of 
their clothes. Spoiling of armor is an heroic 
deed in all ages ; but the selling of clothes, old 
or new, has never taken any color of magna- 
nimity. Yet one does not see why feeding the 
hungry and clothing the naked should ever be- 
come base businesses, even when engaged in on a 



TRAFFIC. 83 

large scale. If one could contrive to attach the 
notion of conquest to them anyhow ! so that, 
supposing there were anywhere an obstinate race, 
who refused to be comforted, one might take 
some pride in giving them compulsory comfort ! * 
and as it were, ''occupying a country " with one's 
gifts, instead of one's armies? If one could only 
consider it as much a victory to get a barren field 
sown, as to get an eared field stripped ; and con- 
tend who should build villages, instead of who 
should ''carry " them ! Are not all forms of 
heroism, conceivable in doing these serviceable 
deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It might 
be ascertained by push of spade, as well as push 
of sword. Who is wisest ? There are witty things 
to be thought of in planning other business than 
campaigns. Who is bravest ? There are always 
the elements to fight with, stronger than men ; 
and nearly as merciless. 

The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic 
element in the soldier's work seems to be — that 
he is paid little for it — and regularly : while you 
traffickers, and exchangers, and others occupied 
in presumably benevolent business, like to be paid 
much for it — and by chance. I never can make 
out how it is that a te^/z/-errant does not expect 
to be paid for his trouble, but a pedler-Qu^int 
always does; — that people are willing to take hard 
knocks for nothing, but never to sell ribands 
cheap ; — that they are ready to go on fervent 
crusades to recover the tomb of a buried God, 
but never on any travels to fulfil the orders of a 

* Quite serious, all this, though it reads like jest. 



84 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

living one ; — that they will go anywhere barefoot 
to preach their faith, but must be well bribed to 
practise it, and are perfectly ready to give the 
Gospel gratis, but never the loaves and fishes.* 

If you chose to take the matter up on any such 
soldierly principle, to do your commerce, and 
your feeding of nations, for fixed salaries ; and to 
be as particular about giving people the best food, 
and the best cloth, as soldiers are about giving 
them the best gunpowder, I could carve something 
for you on your exchange worth looking at. But 
I can only at present suggest decorating its frieze 
with pendent purses ; and making its pillars broad 
at the base, for the sticking of bills. And in the 
innermost chambers of it there might be a statue 
of Britannia of the Market, who may have, per- 
haps advisably, a partridge for her crest, typical 
at once of her courage in fighting for noble ideas, 
and of her interest in game ; and round its neck 
the inscription in golden letters, *' Perdix fovit 
quae non peperit." f Then, for her spear, she 
might have a weaver's beam ; and on her shield, 
instead of St. George's Cross, the Milanese boar, 
semi-fleeced, with the town of Gennesaret proper, 
in the field, and the legend " In the best market," \ 
and her corselet, of leather, folded over her heart 
in the shape of a purse, with thirty slits in it for a 
piece of money to go in at, on each day of the 

* Please think over this paragraph, too briefly and antithetically put, 
but one of those which I am happiest in having written. 

t Jerem. xvii. ii (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). "As the par- 
tridge, fostering what she brought not forth, so be that getteth riches, 
not by right shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at his end 
shall be a fool." 

X Meaning fully, " We have brought our pigs to it." 



TRAFFIC. 85 

month. And I doubt not but that people would 
come to see your exchange, and its goddess, with 
applause. 

Nevertheless, I want to point out to you cer- 
tain strange characters in tliis goddess of yours. 
She differs from the great Greek and Mediaeval 
deities essentially in two things — first, as to the 
continuance of her presumed power ; secondly, 
as to the extent of it. 

ist, as to the Continuance. 

The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave continual 
increase of wisdom, as the Christian Spirit of Com- 
fort (or Comforter) continual increase of comfort. 
There was no question, with these, of any limit or 
cessation of function. But with your Agora God- 
dess, that is just the most important question. 
Getting on — but where to ? Gathering together 
— but how much ? Do you mean to gather always 
— never to spend ? If so, I wish you joy of your 
goddess, for I am just as well off as you, without 
the trouble of worshipping her at all. But if you 
do not spend, somebody else will — somebody else 
must. And it is because of this (among many 
other such errors) that I have fearlessly declared 
your so-called science of Political Economy to be 
no science ; because, namely, it has omitted the 
study of exactly the most important branch of the 
business — the study of spefiding. For spend you 
must, and as much as you make, ultimately. You 
gather corn : — will you bury England under a heap 
of grain; or will you, when you have gathered, 
finally eat? You gather gold: — will you make 
your house-roofs of it, or pave your streets with it ? 



86 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

That is still one way of spending it. But if you 
keep it, that you may get more, I'll give you more; 
I'll give you all the gold you want — all you can 
imagine — if you can tell me what you'll do with 
it. You shall have thousands of gold pieces ; — 
thousands of thousands — millions — mountains, of 
gold : where will you keep them ? Will you 
put an Olympus of silver upon a golden Pelion — 
make Ossa like a wart ? Do you think the rain 
and dew would then come down to you, in the 
streams from such mountains, more blessedly than 
they will down the mountains which God has 
made for you, of moss and whinstone ? But it 
is not gold that you want to gather ! What is it ? 
greenbacks ? No ; not those neither. What is it 
then — is it ciphers after a capital I ? Cannot you 
practise writing ciphers, and write as many as you 
want ? Write ciphers for an hour every morning, 
in a big book, and say every evening, I am worth' 
all those noughts more than I was yesterday. 
Won't that do ? Well, what in the name of Plutus 
is 'it you want? Not gold, not greenbacks, not 
ciphers after a capital I ? You will have to an- 
swer, after all, " No ; we want, somehow or other, 
money's worth.'' Well, what is that? Let your 
Goddess of Getting-on discover it, and let her 
learn to stay therein. 

II. But there is yet another question to be 
asked respecting this Goddess of Getting-on. The 
first was of the continuance of her power ; the sec- 
ond is of its extent. 

Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to be all 
the world's Pallas, and all the world's Madonna. 



TRAFFIC. 87 

They could teach all men, and they could comfort 
all men. But, look strictly into the nature of the 
power of your Goddess of Getting-on ; and you 
will find she is the Goddess — not of everybody's 
getting on — but only of somebody's getting on. 
This is a vital, or rather deathful, distinction. 
Examine it in your own ideal of the state of na- 
tional life which this Goddess is to evoke and 
maintain. I asked you what it was, when I was 
last here ; * — you have never told me. Now, 
shall I try to tell you ? 

Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that 
it sliould be passed in a pleasant undulating world, 
with iron and coal everywhere underneath it. On 
each pleasant bank of this world is to be a beauti- 
ful mansion, with two wings; and stables, and 
coach-houses ; a moderately sized park ; a large 
garden and hot-houses ; and pleasant carriage 
drives through the shrubberies. In this mansion 
are to live the favored votaries of the Goddess ; 
the English gentleman, with his gracious wife, and 
his beautiful family ; always able to have the bou- 
doir and the jewels for the wife, and the beautiful 
ball dresses for the daughters, and hunters for the 
sons, and a shooting in the Highlands for himself. 
At the bottom of the bank, is to be the mill ; not 
less than a quarter of a mile long, with a steam 
engine at each end, and two in the middle, and a 
chimney three hundred feet high. In this mill 
are to be in constant employment from eight hun- 
dred to a thousand workers, who never drink, 

* " The Two Paths," p. 115 (small edition), and p, 99 of vol. x. of 
the " Revised Series of the Entire Works." 



88 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

never strike, always go to church on Sunday, and 
always express themselves in respectful language. 

Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, 
the kind of thing you propose to yourselves ? It is 
very pretty indeed, seen from above ; not at all so 
pretty, seen from below. For, observe, while to 
one family this deity is indeed the Goddess of 
Getting-on, to a thousand families she is the God- 
dess of not Getting-on. '' Nay," you say, '' they 
have all their chance." Yes, so has every one in 
a lottery, but there must always be the same num- 
ber of blanks. ''Ah ! but in a lottery it is not 
skill and intelligence which take the lead, but 
blind chance." What then ! do you think the old 
practice, that ''they should take who have the 
power, and they should keep who can," is less in- 
iquitous, when the power has become power of 
brains instead of fist ? and that, though we may 
not take advantage of a child's or a woman's 
weakness, we may of a man's foolishness ? " Nay, 
but finally, work must be done, and some one 
must be at the top, some one at the bottom." 
Granted, my friends. Work must always be, and 
captains of work must always be ; and if you in the 
least remember the tone of any of my writings, 
you must know that they are thought unfit for this 
age, because they are always insisting on need of 
government, and speaking with scorn of liberty. 
But I beg you to observe that there is a wide dif- 
ference between being captains or governors of 
work, and taking the profits of it. It does not 
follow, because you are general of an army, that 
you are to take all the treasure, or land, it wins 



TRAFFIC. 89 

(if it fight for treasure or land) ; neither, because 
you are king of a nation, that you are to consume 
all the profits of the nation's work. Real kings, 
on the contrary, are known invariably by their 
doing quite the reverse of this, — by their taking 
the least possible quantity of the nation's work for 
themselves. There is no test of real kinghood so 
infallible as that. Does the crowned creature live 
simply, bravely, unostentatiously ? probably he is 
a King. Does he cover his body with jewels, and 
his table with delicates? in all probability he is 
not a King. It is possible he may be, as Solomon 
was ; but that is when the nation shares his splen- 
dor with him. Solomon made gold, not only to 
be in his own palace as stones, but to be in Jeru- 
salem as stones. But even so, for the most part, 
these splendid kinghoods expire in ruin, and only 
the true kinghoods live, which are of royal labor- 
ers governing loyal laborers; who, both leading 
rough lives, establish the true dynasties. Con- 
clusively you will find that because you are king 
of a nation, it does not follow that you are to 
gather for yourself all the wealth of that nation ; 
neither, because you are king of a small part of 
the nation, and lord over the means of its main- 
tenance — over field, or mill, or mine, — you are 
to take all the produce of that piece of the foun- 
dation of national existence for yourself. 

You will tell me I need not preach against these 
things, for I cannot mend them. No, good 
friends, I cannot ; but you can, and you will ; or 
something else can and will. Even good things 
have no abiding power — and shall these evil things 



go THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

persist in victorious evil ? All history shows, on 
the contrary, that to be the exact thing they 
never can do. Change must come ; but it is ours 
to determine whether change of growth, or change 
of death. Shall the Parthenon be in ruins on its 
rock, and Bolton priory in its meadow, but these 
mills of yours be the consummation of the build- 
ings of the earth, and their wheels be as the wheels 
of eternity? Think you that *'men may come, 
and men may go," but — mills — go on forever? 
Not so ; out of these, better or worse shall come ; 
and it is for you to choose which. 

I know that none of this wrong is done with 
deliberate purpose. I know, on the contrary, 
that you wish your workmen well ; that you do 
much for them, and that you desire to do more 
for them, if you saw your way to such benevolence 
safely. I know that even all this wrong and mis- 
ery are brought about by a warped sense of duty, 
each of you striving to do his best ; but unhap- 
pily, not knowing for whom this best should be 
done. And all our hearts have been betrayed by 
the plausible impiety of the modern economist, 
that ^'To do the best for yourself, is finally to do 
the best for others." Friends, our great Master 
said not so; and most absolutely we shall find 
this world is not made so. Indeed, to do the best 
for others, is finally to do the best for ourselves ; 
but it will not do to have our eyes fixed on that 
issue. The Pagans had got beyond that. Hear 
what a Pagan says of this matter; hear what were, 
perhaps, the last written words of Plato, — if not 
the last actually written (for this we cannot know), 



TRAFFIC. 91 

yet assuredly in fact and power his parting words 
— in which, endeavoring to give full crowning and 
harmonious close to all his thoughts, and to speak 
the sum of them by the imagined sentence of the 
Great Spirit, his strength and his heart fail him, 
and the words cease, broken off forever. 

They are at the close of the dialogue called 
*^ Critias," in which he describes, partly from real 
tradition, partly in ideal dream, the early state of 
Athens ; and the genesis, and order, and religion, 
of the fabled isle of Atlantis; in which genesis he 
conceives the same first perfection and final de- 
generacy of man, which in our own Scriptural 
tradition is expressed by saying that the Sons of 
God intermarried with the daughters of men, for 
he supposes the earliest race to have been indeed 
the children of God ; and to have corrupted 
themselves, until ''their spot was not the spot of 
his children." And this, he says, was the end; 
that indeed *' through many generations, so long 
as the God's nature in them yet was full, they 
were submissive to the sacred laws, and carried 
themselves lovingly, to all that had kindred with 
them in divineness ; for their uttermost spirit was 
faithful and true, and in every wise great ; so that, 
in all meekness of wisdom, they dealt with each other, 
and took all the chances of life ; and despising 
all things except virtue, they cared little what 
happened day by day, and bore lightly the burden 
of gold and of possessions ; for they saw that, if 
only their co7?mion love and virtue increased, all 
these things would be ittcreased together with thetn ; 
but to set their esteem and ardent pursuit upon 



92 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

material possession would be to lose that first, 
and their virtue and affection together with it. 
And by such reasoning, and what of the divine 
nature remained in them, they gained all this 
greatness of which we have already told \ but 
when the God's part of them faded and became 
extinct, being mixed again and again, and effaced 
by the prevalent mortality ; and the human nature 
at last exceeded, they then became unable to en- 
dure the courses of fortune ; and fell into shape- 
lessness of life, and baseness in the sight of him 
who could see, having lost everything that was 
fairest of their honor; while to the blind hearts 
which could not discern the true life, tending to 
happiness, it seemed that they were then chiefly 
noble and happy, being filled with all iniquity of 
inordinate possession and power. Whereupon, 
the God of gods, whose Kinghood is in laws, be- 
holding a once just nation thus cast into misery, 
and desiring to lay such punishment upon them as 
might make them repent into restraining, gathered 
together all the gods into his dwelling-place, 
which from heaven's centre overlooks whatever 
has part in creation ; and having assembled them, 
he said " — 

The rest is silence. Last words of the chief 
wisdom of the heathen, spoken of this idol of 
riches; this idol of yours; this golden image 
high by measureless cubits, set up where your 
green fields of England are furnaceburnt into the 
likeness of the plain of Dura : this idol, forbidden 
to us, first of all idols, by our own Master and 
faith; forbidden to us also by every human lip 



TRAFFIC. 



93 



that has ever, in any age or people, been accounted 
of as able to speak according to the purposes 
of God. Continue to make that forbidden deity 
your principal one, and soon no more art, no 
more science, no more pleasure will be possible. 
Catastrophe will come ; or worse than catastrophe, 
slow mouldering and withering into Hades. But 
if you can fix some conception of a true human 
state of life to be striven for — life good for all 
men as for yourselves — if you can determine some 
honest and simple order of existence ; following 
those trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleas- 
antness, and seeking her quiet and withdrawn 
paths, which are peace;* — then, and so sanctify- 
ing wealth into "commonwealth," all your art, 
your literature, your daily labors, your domestic 
affection, and citizen's duty, will join and increase 
into one magnificent harmony. You will know 
then how to build, well enough ; you will build 
with stone well, but with flesh better ; temples not 
made with hands, but riveted of hearts ; and that 
kind of marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal. 

* I imagine the Hebrew chant merely intends passionate repeti- 
tion, and not a distinction of this somewhat fanciful kind; yet we may 
profitably make it in reading the English. 



WAR 



(95) 



IVAJ?. Q'j 



WAR. 



Young soldiers, I do not doubt but that many 
of you came unwillingly to-night, and many in 
merely contemptuous curiosity, to hear what a 
writer on painting could possibly say, or would 
venture to say, respecting your great art of war. 
You may well think within yourselves, that a 
painter might, perhaps without immodesty, lecture 
younger painters upon painting, but not young 
lawyers upon law, nor young physicians upon 
medicine — least of all, it may seem to you, young 
warriors upon war. And, indeed, when I was 
asked to address you, I declined at first, and de- 
clined long ; for I felt that you would not be in- 
terested in my special business, and would cer- 
tainly think there was small need for me to come 
to teach you yours. Nay, I knew that there 
ought to be no such need, for the great veteran 
soldiers of England are now men every way so 
thoughtful, so noble, and so good, that no other 
teaching than their knightly example, and their 
few words of grave and tried counsel should be 
either necessary for you, or even, without as- 
surance of due modesty in the offerer, endured by 
you. 

But being asked, not once nor twice, I have 
not ventured persistently to refuse ; and I will try, 
in very few words, to lay before you some reason 
7 



98 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 



why you should accept my excuse, and hear me 
patiently. You may imagine that your work is 
wholly foreign to, and separate from mine. So 
far from that, all the pure and noble arts of peace 
are founded on war ; no great art ever yet rose on 
earth, but among a nation of soldiers. There is 
no art among a shepherd people, if it remains at 
peace. There is no art among an agricultural 
people, if it remains at peace. Commerce is 
barely consistent with fine art ; but cannot pro- 
duce it. Manufacture not only is unable to pro- 
duce it, but invariably destroys whatever seeds of 
it exist. There is no great art possible to a 
nation but that which is based on battle. 

Now, though I hope you love fighting for its 
own sake, you must, I imagine, be surprised at 
my assertion that there is any such good fruit of 
fighting. You supposed, probably, that your 
office was to defend the works of peace, but cer- 
tainly not to found them : nay, the common 
course of war, you may have thought, was only to 
destroy them. And truly, I who tell you this of 
the use of war, should have been the last of men 
to tell you so, had I trusted my own experience 
only. Hear why : I have given a considerable 
part of my life to the investigation of Venetian 
painting, and the result of that inquiry was my 
fixing upon one man as the greatest of all Vene- 
tians, and therefore, as I believed, of all painters 
whatsoever. I formed this faith (whether right 
or wrong matters at present nothing), in the 
supremacy of the painter Tintoret, under a roof 
covered with his pictures ; and of those pictures, 



three of the noblest were then in the form of 
shreds of ragged canvas, mixed up with the laths 
of the roof, rent through by three Austrian shells. 
Now it is not every lecturer who could tell you 
that he had seen three of his favorite pictures 
torn to rags by bomb-shells. And after such a 
sight, it is not every lecturer who would tell you 
that, nevertheless, war was the foundation of all 
great art. 

Yet the conclusion is inevitable, from any 
careful comparison of the states of great historic 
faces at different periods. Merely to show you 
what I mean, I will sketch for you, very briefly, 
the broad steps of the advance of the best art of 
the world. The first dawn of it is in Egypt ; and 
the power of it is founded on the perpetual con- 
templation of death, and of future judgment, by 
the mind of a nation of which the ruling caste 
were priests, and the second, soldiers. The 
greatest works produced by them are sculptures 
of their kings going out to battle, or receiving 
the homage of conquered armies. And you must 
remember also, as one of the great keys to the 
splendor of the Egyptian nation, that the priests 
were not occupied in theology only. Their the- 
ology was the basis of practical government and 
law ; so that they were not so much priests as re- 
ligious judges ; the office of Samuel, among the Jews, 
being as nearly as possible correspondent to theirs. 

All the rudiments of art then, and much more 
than the rudiments of all science, are laid first by 
this great warrior-nation, which held in contempt 
all mechanical trades, and in absolute hatred the 



^ 



lOO THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

peaceful life of shepherds. From Egypt art 
passes directly into Greece, where all poetry, and 
all painting, are nothing else than the descrip- 
tion, praise, or dramatic representation of war, or 
of the exercises which prepare for it, in their con- 
nection with offices of religion. All Greek in- 
stitutions had first respect to war ; and their con- 
ception of it, as one necessary office of all human 
and divine life, is expressed simply by the images 
of their guiding gods. Apollo is the god of all 
wisdom of the intellect; he bears the arrow and 
the bow, before he bears the lyre. Again, Atheifk 
is the goddess of all wisdom in conduct. It is by 
the helmet and the shield, oftener than by the 
shuttle, that she is distinguished from other deities. 
There were, however, two great differences in 
principle between the Greek and the Egyptian 
theories of policy. In Greece there was no 
soldier caste ; every citizen was necessarily a 
soldier. And, again, while the Greeks rightly 
despised mechanical arts as much as the Egyptians, 
they did not make the fatal mistake of despising 
agricultural and pastoral life ; but perfectly 
honored both. These two conditions of truer 
thought raise them quite into the highest rank of 
wise manhood that has yet been reached ; for all 
our great arts, and nearly all our great thoughts, 
have been borrowed or derived from them. Take 
away from us what they have given ; and I hardly 
can imagine how low the modern* European 
would stand. 

* The modern, observe, because we have lost all inheritance from 
Florence or Venice, and are now pensioners upon the Greeks only. 



WAR. 



lOI 



Now, you are to remember, in passing to the 
next phase of history, that though you must have 
war to produce art — you must also have much 
more than war; namely, an art-instinct or genius 
in the people ; and that, though all the talent for 
painting in the world won't make painters of you, 
unless you have a gift for fighting as well, you may 
have the gift for fighting, and none for painting. 
Now, in the next great dynasty of soldiers, the 
art-instinct is wholly wanting. I have not yet in- 
vestigated the Roman character enough to tell you 
the causes of this; 'but I believe, paradoxical as it 
may seem to you, that, however truly the Roman 
might say of himself that he was born of Mars, 
and suckled by the wolf, he was nevertheless, at 
heart, more of a farmer than a soldier. The ex- 
ercises of war were with him practical, not poeti- 
cal ; his poetry was in domestic life only, and the 
object of battle, " pacis imponere morem." And 
the arts are extinguished in his hands, and do not 
rise again, until, with Gothic chivalry, there 
comes back into the mind of Europe a passionate 
delight in war itself, for the sake of war. And 
then, with the romantic knighthood which can 
imagine no other noble employment, — under the 
fighting kings of France, England, and Spain ; 
and under the fighting dukeships and citizenships 
of Italy, art is born again, and rises to her height 
in the great valleys of Lombardy and Tuscany, 
through which there flows not a single stream, 
from all their Alps or Apennines, that did not 
once run dark red from battle : and it reaches 
its culminating glory in the city which gave to 



102 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

history the most intense type of soldiership yet 
seen among men ; — the city whose armies were led 
in their assault by their king, led through it to 
victory by their king,* and so led, though that 
king of theirs was blind, and in the extremity of 
his age. 

And from this time forward, as peace is estab- 
lished or extended in Europe, the arts decline. 
They reach an unparalleled pitch of costliness, 
but lose their life, enlist themselves at last on the 
side of luxury and various corruption, and, among 
wholly tranquil nations, wither utterly away ; re- 
maining only in partial practice among races who, 
like the French and us, have still the minds, 
though we cannot all live the lives, of soldiers. 

''It may be so," I can suppose that a pliilaTi- 
thropist might exclaim. " Perish then the arts, 
if they can flourish only at such a cost. What 
worth is there in toys of canvas and stone, if com- 
pared to the joy and peace of artless domestic 
life? " And the answer is — truly, in themselves, 
none. But as expressions of the highest state of 
the human spirit, their worth is infinite. As re- 
sults they may be worthless, but, as signs, they are 
above price. For it is an assured truth that, 
whenever the faculties of men are at their fulness, 
they 7nust express themselves by art ; and to say 
that a state is without such expression, is to say 
that it is sunk from its proper level of manly na- 
ture. So that, when j^J^U-^iou-lhat war is the 
foundation of all the arts, I mean also that it is the 

* Henry Dandolo : the King of Bohemia is very grand, too, and by 
the issue, his knighthood is, to us, more memorable. 



WAR. 



103 



foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of 
menT 

It is very strange to me to discover this ; and 
very dreadful — but I saw it to be quite an undeni- 
able fact. The common notion that peace and 
the virtues of civil life flourished together, I found 
to be wholly untenable. Peace and the vices of 
civil life only flourish together. We talk of peace 
and learning, and of peace and plenty, and of 
peace and civilization ; but I found that those 
were not the words which the Muse of History 
coupled together : that on her lips, the words 
were — peace and sensuality, peace and selfishness, 
peace and corruption, peace and death. I found, 
in brief, that all great nations learned their truth 
of word, and strength of thought, in war; that 
they were nourished in war, and wasted by peace; 
taught by war, and deceived by peace ; trained 
by war, and betrayed by peace ; — in a word, that 
they were born in war and expired in peace. 

Yet now note carefully, in the second place, it 
is not all war of which this can be said — nor all 
dragon's teeth, which, sown, will start up into 
men. It is not the ravage of a barbarian wolf- 
flock, as under Genseric or Suwarrow ; nor the 
habitual restlessness and rapine of mountaineers, 
as on the old borders of Scotland ; nor the 
occasional struggle of a strong peaceful nation for 
its life, as in the wars of the Swiss with Austria; 
nor the contest of merely ambitious nations for 
extent of power, as in the wars of France under 
Napoleon, or the just terminated war in America. 
None of these forms of war build anything but 



I04 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 



tombs. But the creative or foundational war is 
that in which the natural restlessness and love of 
contest among men are disciplined, by consent, 
into modes of beautiful — though it may be fatal 
— play : in which the natural ambition and love 
of power of men are disciplined into the aggres- 
sive conquest of surrounding evil : and in which 
the natural instincts of self-defence are sanctified 
by the nobleness of the institutions, and purity 
of the households, which they are appointed to 
defend. To such war as this all men are born ; 
in such war as this any man may happily die ; and 
out of such war as this have arisen throughout the 
extent of past ages, all the highest sanctities and 
virtues of humanity. 

I shall therefore divide the war of which I 
would speak to you into three heads. War for 
exercise or play ; war for dominion ; and, war for 
defence. 

I. And first, of war for exercise or play. I 
speak of it primarily, in this light, because, 
through all past history, manly war has been more 
an exercise than anything else, among the classes 
who cause, and proclaim it. It is not a game to 
the conscript, or the pressed sailor; but neither of 
these are the causers of it. To the governor who 
determines that war shall be, and to the youths 
who voluntarily adopt it as their profession, it has 
always been a grand pastime ; and chiefly pursued 
because they had nothing else to do. And this is 
true without any exception. No king whose 
mind was fully occupied with the development 
of the inner resources of his kingdom, or with 



IVA/^. 



los 



any other sufficing subject of thought, ever entered 
into war but on compulsion. No youth who was 
earnestly busy with any peaceful subject of study, 
or set on any serviceable course of action, ever 
voluntarily became a soldier. Occupy him early 
and wisely, in agriculture or business, in science 
or in literature, and he will never think of war 
otherwise than as a calamity.* But leave him 
idle ; and, the more brave and active and capable 
he is by nature, the more he will thirst for some 
appointed field for action ; and find, in the 
passion and peril of battle, the only satisfying 
fulfilment of his unoccupied being. And from 
the earliest incipient civilization until now, the 
population of the earth divides itself, when you 
look at it widely, into two races; one of workers, 
and the other of players — one tilling the ground, 
manufacturing, building, and otherwise providing 
for the necessities of life; — the other part proudly 
idle, and continually therefore needing recreation, 
in which they use the productive and laborious 
orders partly as their cattle, and partly as their 
puppets or pieces in the game of death. 

f Now, remember, whatever virtue or goodli- 
ness there may be in this game of war, rightly 
played, there is none when you thus play it with a 
multitude of human pawns. 

If you, the gentlemen of this or any other king- 

* A wholesome calamity, observe, not to be shrunk from, though not 
to be provoked. 

t I dislike more and more every day the declamatory forms in which 
what I most desired to make impressive was arranged for oral delivery, 
but the three following paragraphs sacrifice no accuracy in their en- 
deavor to be pompous, and are among the most importantly true pas- 
sages I have ever written. 



Io6 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

dom, choose to make your pastime of contest, do 
so, and welcome ; but set not up these unhappy 
peasant-pieces upon the checker of forest and field. 
If the wager is to be of death, lay it on your own 
heads, not theirs. A goodly struggle in the Olym- 
pic dust, though it be the dust of the grave, the 
gods will look upon, and be with you in ; but they 
will not be with you, if you sit on the sides of the 
amphitheatre, whose steps are the mountains of 
earth, whose arena its valleys, to urge your peasant 
millions into gladiatorial war. You also, you ten- 
der and delicate women, for whom, and by whose 
command, all true battle has been, and must ever 
be ; you would perhaps shrink now, though you 
need not, from the thought of sitting as queens 
above set lists where the jousting game might be 
mortal. How much more, then, ought you to 
shrink from the thought of sitting above a theatre 
pit in which even a few condemned slaves were 
slaying each other only for your delight ! And do 
you not shrink from the/i^r/ of sitting above a the- 
atre pit, where, — not condemned slaves, — but the 
best and bravest of the poor sons of your people, 
slay each other, — not man to man, — as the coupled 
gladiators ; but race to race, in duel of generations ? 
You would tell me, perhaps, that you do not sit to 
see this ; and it is indeed true, that the women of 
Europe — those who have no heart-interest of their 
own at peril in the contest — draw the curtains of 
their boxes, and muffle the openings ; so that from 
the pit of the circus of slaughter there may reach 
them only at intervals a half-heard cry and a mur- 
mur as of the wind's sighing, when myriads of 



IVAJ^. 



107 



souls expire. They shut out the death-cries ; and 
are happy, and talk wittily among themselves. 
That is the utter literal fact of what our ladies do 
in their pleasant lives. 

Nay, you might answer, speaking with them — 
'' We do not let these wars come to pass for our 
play, nor by our carelessness; we cannot help 
them. How can any final quarrel of nations be 
settled otherwise than by war?" 

I cannot now delay to tell you how political 
quarrels might be otherwise settled. But grant 
that they cannot. Grant that no law of reason 
can be understood by nations ; no law of justice 
submitted to by them : and that, while questions 
of a few acres, and of petty cash, can be deter- 
mined by truth and equity, the questions which 
are to issue in the perishing or saving of kingdoms 
can be determined only by the truth of the sword, 
and the equity of the rifle. Grant this, and even 
then, judge if it will always be necessary for you to 
put your quarrel into the hearts of your poor, and 
sign your treaties with peasants' blood. You 
would be ashamed to do this in your own private 
position and power. Why should you not be 
ashamed also to do it in public place and power? 
If you quarrel with your neighbor, and the quarrel 
be indeterminable by law, and mortal, you and he 
do not send your footmen to Battersea fields to 
fight it out ; nor do you set fire to his tenants' 
cottages, nor spoil their goods. You fight out 
your quarrel yourselves, and at your own danger, 
if at all. And you do not think it materially af- 
fects the arbitrament that one of you has a larger 



lo8 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

household than the other ; so that, if the servants 
or tenants were brought into the field with their 
masters, the issue of the contest could not be 
doubtful ? You either refuse the private duel, or 
you practise it under laws of honor, not of 
physical force ; that so it may be, in a manner, 
justly concluded. Now the just or unjust conclu- 
sion of the private feud is of little moment, while 
the just or unjust conclusion of the public feud is 
of eternal moment : and yet, in this public quar- 
rel, you take your servants' sons from their arms to 
fight for it, and your servants' food from their 
lips to support it ; and the black seals on the 
parchment of your treaties of peace are the de- 
serted hearth and the fruitless field. 

There is a ghastly ludicrousness in this, as there 
is mostly in these wide and universal crimes. 
Hear the statement of the very fact of it in the 
most literal words of the greatest of our English 
thinkers : — 

*'What, speaking in quite unofficial language, 
is the net purport and upshot of war? To my 
own knowledge, for example, there dwell and toil, 
in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some 
five hundred souls. From these, by certain ' nat- 
ural enemies ' of the French, there are succes- 
sively selected, during the French war, say thirty 
able-bodied men. Dumdrudge, at her own ex- 
pense, has suckled and nursed them ; she has, not 
without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to 
manhood, and even trained them to crafts, so 
that one can weave, another build, another ham- 
mer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone 



WAR. 



109 



avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping 
and swearing, they are selected ; all dressed in 
red; and shipped away, at the public charges, 
some two thousand miles, or say only to the south 
of Spain ; and fed there till wanted. 

''And now to that same spot in the south of 
Spain are thirty similar French artisans, from a 
French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending ; till 
at length, after infinite effort, the two parties 
come into actual juxtaposition ; and Thirty stands 
fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. 

''Straightway the word ' Fire ! ' is given, and 
they blow the souls out of one another, and in 
place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world 
has sixty dead carcases, which it must bury, and 
anon shed tears for. Had these men any quar- 
rel ? Busy as the devil is, not the smallest ! 
They lived far enough apart ; were the entirest 
strangers ; nay, in so wide a universe, there was 
even, unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual 
helpfulness between them. How then ? Simple- 
ton ! their governors had fallen out ; and instead 
of shooting one another, had the cunning to 
make these poor blockheads shoot." (Sartor 
Resartus.) 

Positively, then, gentlemen, the game of battle 
must not, and shall not, ultimately be played this 
way. But should it be played any way ? Should 
it, if not by your servants, be practised by your- 
selves ? I think, yes. Both history and human 
instinct seem alike to say, yes. All healthy men 
like fighting, and like the sense of danger; all 
brave women like to hear of their fighting, and 



no THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

of their facing danger. This is a fixed instinct 
in the fine race of them ; and I cannot help 
fancying that fair fight is the best play for them ; 
and that a tournament was a better game than a 
steeple-chase. The time may perhaps come in 
France as well as here, for universal hurdle-races 
and cricketing : but I do not think universal 
crickets will bring out the best qualities of the 
nobles of either country. I use, in such question, 
the test which I have adopted, of the connection 
of war with other arts ; and I reflect how, as a 
sculptor, I should feel, if I were asked to design 
a monument for a dead knight, in Westminster 
abbey, with a carving of a bat at one end, and a 
ball at the other. It may be the remains in me 
only of savage Gothic prejudice ; but I had rather 
carve it with a shield at one end, and a sword at 
the other. And this, observe, with no reference 
whatever to any story of duty done, or cause 
defended. Assume the knight merely to have 
ridden out occasionally to fight his neighbor for 
exercise ; assume him even a soldier of fortune, 
and to have gained his bread, and filled his purse, 
at the sword's point. Still, I feel as if it were, 
somehow, grander and worthier in him to have 
made his bread by sword play than any other 
play ; I had rather he had made it by thrusting 
than by batting ; — ijiuch rather, than by betting. 
Much rather that he should ride war horses, than 
back race horses ; and — I say it sternly and 
deliberately — much rather would I have him slay 
his neighbor, than cheat him. 

But remember, so far as this may be true, the 



WAR. 



Ill 



game of war is only that in which the full per- 
sonal power of the human creature is brought out 
in management of its weapons. And this for 
three reasons : — 

First, the great justification of this game is 
that it truly when well played, determines wJio 
is the best man; — who is the highest bred, the 
most self-denying, the most fearless, the coolest 
of nerve, the swiftest of eye and hand. You can- 
not test these qualities wholly, unless there is a 
clear possibility of the struggle's ending in death. 
It is only in the fronting of that condition that 
the full trial of the man, soul and body, comes, 
out. You may go to your game of wickets, or of 
hurdles, or of cards, and any knavery that is in 
you may stay unchallenged all the while. But if 
the play may be ended at any moment by a 
lance-thrust, a man will probably make up his ac- 
counts a little before he enters it. Whatever is 
rotten and evil in him will weaken his hand more 
in holding a sword-hilt, than in balancing a 
billiard-cue ; and on the whole, the habit of liv- 
ing lightly hearted, in daily presence of death, 
always has had, and must have, power both in the 
making and testing of honest men. But for the 
final testing, observe, you must make the issue 
of battle strictly dependent on fineness of frame, 
and firmness of hand. You must not make it the 
question, which of the combatants has the longest 
gun, or which has got behind the biggest tree, or 
which has the wind in his face, or which has gun- 
powder made by the best chemists, or iron smelted 
with the best coal, or the angriest mob at his 



112 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

back. Decide your battle, whether of nations, 
or individuals, on those terms; — and you have 
only multiplied confusion, and added slaughter to 
iniquity. But decide your battle by pure trial 
which has the strongest arm, and steadiest heart, 
— and you have gone far to decide a great many 
matters besides, and to decide them rightly.* 

And the other reasons for this mode of decision 
of cause, are the diminution both of the material 
destructiveness, or cost, and of the physical dis- 
tress of war. For you must not think that in 
speaking to you in this (as you may imagine), 
fantastic praise of battle, I have overlooked the 
conditions weighing against me. I pray all of 
you, who have not read, to read with the most 
earnest attention, Mr. Helps's two essays on War 
and Government, in the first volume of the last 
series of ^' Friends in Council." Everything that 
can be urged against war is there simply, exhaust- 
ively, and most graphically stated. And all, 
there urged, is true. But the two great counts of 
evil alleged against war by that most thoughtful 
writer, hold only against modern war. If you 
have to take away masses of men from all indus- 
trial employment, — to feed them by the labor of 
others, — to provide them with destructive ma- 
chines, varied daily in national rivalship of in- 
ventive cost ; if you have to ravage the country 
which you attack, — to destroy for a score of 
future years, its roads, its woods, its cities, and its 
harbors ; — and if, finally, having brought masses 
of men, counted by hundreds of thousands, face to 

* Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter XIV. 



WAR. 



"3 



face, you tear those masses to pieces with jagged 
shot, and leave the living creatures, countlessly 
beyond all help of surgery, to starve and parch, 
through days of torture, down into clots of clay — 
what book of accounts shall record the cost of 
your work ; — what book of judgment sentence the 
guilt of it? 

That, I say, is modern war^ — scientific war, — 
chemical and mechanic war, — how much worse 
than the savage's poisoned arrow ! And yet you 
will tell me, perhaps, that any other war than this 
is impossible now. It may be so ; the progress of 
science cannot, perhaps, be otherwise registered 
than by new facilities of destruction ; and the 
brotherly love of our enlarging Christianity be 
only proved by multiplication of murder. Yet 
hear, for a moment, what war was, in Pagan and 
ignorant days ; — what war might yet be, if we 
could extinguish our science in darkness, and join 
the heathen's practice to the Christian's theory. 
I read you this from a book which probably most 
of you know well, and all ought to know — Miil- 
ler's "Dorians;" — but I have put the points I 
wish you to remember in closer connection than 
in his text. 

"The chief characteristic of the warriors of 
Sparta was great composure and subdued strength; 
the violence (xvcraa) of Aristodemus and Isadas 
being considered as deserving rather of blame than 
praise ; and these qualities in general distinguished 
the Greeks from the northern Barbarians, whose 
boldness always consisted in noise and tumult. 
For the same reason the Spartans sacrificed to the 
8 



114 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 



Muses before an action ; these goddesses being 
expected to produce regularity and order in 
battle ; as they sacrificed on the saifie occasioji in 
Crete to the god of love, as the confirmer of mu- 
tual esteem and shame. Every man put on a 
crown, when the band of flute-players gave the 
signal for attack; all the shields of the line glit- 
tered with their high polish, and mingled their 
splendor with the dark red of the purple mantles, 
which were meant both to adorn the combatant, 
and to conceal the blood of the wounded ; to fall 
well and decorously being an incentive the more 
to the most heroic valor. The conduct of the 
Spartans in battle denotes a high and noble dis- 
position, which rejected all the extremes of 
brutal rage. The pursuit of the enemy ceased 
when the victory was completed ; and after the 
signal for retreat had been given, all hostilities 
ceased. „ The spoiling of arms, at least during 
the battle, was also interdicted ; and the consecra- 
tion of the spoils of slain enemies to the gods, 
as, in general, all rejoicings for victory, were 
considered as ill-omened." 

Such was the war of the greatest soldiers who 
prayed to heathen gods. What Christian war is, 
preached by Christian ministers, let any one tell 
you, who saw the sacred crowning, and heard the 
sacred flute-playing, and was inspired and sancti- 
fied by the divinely-measured and musical lan- 
guage, of any North American regiment preparing 
for its charge. And what is the relative cost of 
life in pagan and Christian wars, let this one fact 
tell you: — the Spartans won the decisive battle of 



IVAI?. 



"5 



Corinth with the loss of eight men ; the victors 
at indecisive Gettysburg confess to the loss of 
30,000. 

II. I pass now to our second order of war, the 
commonest among men, that undertaken in desire 
of dominion. And let me ask you to think for a 
few moments what the real meaning of this desire 
of dominion is — first in the minds of kings — 
then in that of nations. 

Now, mind you this first, — that I speak either 
about kings, or masses of men, with a fixed con- 
viction that human nature is a noble and beauti- 
ful thing ; not a foul nor a base thing. All the 
sin of men I esteem as their disease, not their 
nature; as a folly which may be prevented, not a 
necessity which must be accepted. And my 
wonder, even when things are at their worst, 
is always at the height which this human nature 
can attain. Thinking it high, I find it always a 
higher thing than I thought it ; while those who 
think it low, find it, and will find it, always lower 
than they thought it : the fact being, that it is 
infinite, and capable of infinite height and infi- 
nite fall ; but the nature of it — and here is the 
faith which I would have you hold with me — the 
nature of it is in the nobleness, not in the 
catastrophe. 

Take the faith in its utmost terms. When the 
captain of the '^London" shook hands with his 
mate, saying "God speed you ! I will go down 
with my passengers," that I believe to be "■ human 
nature." He does not do it from any religious 
motive — from any hope of reward, or any fear of 



Ii6 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

punishment ; he does it because he is a man. 
But when a mother, living among the fair fields 
of merry England, gives her two-year-old child to 
be suffocated under a mattress in her inner room, 
while the said mother waits and talks outside; 
that I believe to be not human nature. You have 
the two extremes there, shortly. And you, men, 
and mothers, who are here face to face with me 
to-night, I call upon you to say which of these is 
human, and which inhuman — which "natural" 
and which " unnatural " ? Choose your creed at 
once, I beseech you : — choose it with unshaken 
choice — choose it forever. Will you take, for 
foundation of act and hope, the faith that this 
man was such as God made him, or that this 
woman was such as God made her? Which of 
them has failed from their nature — from their 
present, possible, actual nature ; — not their nature 
of long ago, but their nature of now? Which 
has betrayed it — falsified it? Did the guardian 
who died in his trust, die inhumanly, and as a 
fool ; and did the murderess of her child fulfil the 
law of her being ? Choose, I say ; infinitude of 
choices hang upon this. You have had false 
prophets among you — for centuries you have had 
them — solemnly warned against them though you 
were ; false prophets, who have told you that all 
men are nothing but fiends or wolves, half beast, 
half devil. Believe that, and indeed you may 
sink to that. But refuse that, and have faith that 
God ''made you upright," though yoii have 
sought out many inventions ; so, you will strive 
daily to become more what your Maker meant 



PVAJ^. 117 

and means you to be, and daily gives you also the 
power to be — and you will cling more and more 
to the nobleness and virtue that is in you, saying, 
*' My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let 
it go." 

I have put this to you as a choice, as if you 
might hold either of these creeds you liked best. 
But there is in reality no choice for you; the 
facts being quite easily ascertainable. You have 
no business to //ii'nk about this matter, or to 
choose in it. The broad fact is, that a human 
creature of the highest race, and most perfect as a 
human thing, is invariably both kind and true ; 
and that as you lower the race, you get cruelty 
and falseness, as you get deformity : and this so 
steadily and assuredly, that the two great words 
which, in their first use, meant only perfection of 
race, have come, by consequence of the invariable 
connection of virtue with the fine human nature, 
both to signify benevolence of disposition. The 
word generous, and the word gentle, both, in 
their origin, meant only ''of pure race," but be- 
cause charity and tenderness are inseparable from 
this purity of blood, the words which once stood 
only for pride, now stand as synonyms for virtue. 

Now, this being the true power of our inherent 
humanity, and seeing that all the aim of education 
should be to develop this; — and seeing also what 
magnificent self-sacrifice the higher classes of men 
are capable of, for any cause that they understand 
or feel, — it is wholly inconceivable to me how well- 
educated princes, who ought to be of all gentle- 
men the gentlest, and of all nobles the most gen- 



Il8 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

erous, and whose title of royalty means only their 
function of doing every man" right ^^ — how these, I 
say, throughout history, should so rarely pronounce 
themselves on the side of the poor and of justice, 
but continually maintain themselves and their own 
interests by oppression of the poor, and by wrest- 
ing of justice ; and how this should be accepted 
as so natural, that the word loyalty, which means 
faithfulness to law, is used as if it were only the 
duty of a people to be loyal to their king, and not 
the duty of a king to be infinitely more loyal to 
his people. How comes it to pass that a captain 
will die with his passengers, and lean over the 
gunwale to give the parting boat its course ; but 
that a king will not usually die with, much less/^r, 
his passengers, — thinks it rather incumbent on his 
passengers in any number, to die for hii?i ? 

Think, I beseech you, of the wonder of this. 
The sea captain, not captain by divine right, but 
only by company's appointment; — not a man of 
royal descent, but only a plebeian who can steer ; 
— not with the eyes of the world upon him, but 
with feeble chance, depending on one poor boat, 
of his name being ever heard above the wash of 
the fatal waves; — not with the cause of'a nation 
resting on his act, but helpless to save so much as 
a child from among the lost crowd with whom he 
resolves to be lost, — yet goes down quietly to his 
grave, rather than break his faith to these few 
emigrants. But your captain by divine right, — 
your captain with the hues of a hundred shields 
of kings upon his breast, — your captain whose 
every deed, brave or base, will be illuminated or 



IVA/?. 



119 



branded forever before unescapable eyes of men, 
— your captain whose every thought and act are 
beneficent, or fatal, from sunrising to setting, 
blessing as the sunshine, or shadowing as the 
night, — this captain, as you find him in history, 
for the most part thinks only how he may tax his 
passengers, and sit at most ease in his state 
cabin ! 

For observe, if there had been indeed in the 
hearts of the rulers of great multitudes of men 
any such conception of work for the good of 
those under their command, as there is in the 
good and thoughtful masters of any small com- 
pany of men, not only wars for the sake of mere 
increase of power could never take place, but ouf 
idea of power itself would be entirely altered. 
Do you suppose that to think and act even for a 
million of men, to hear their complaints, watch 
their weaknesses, restrain their vices, make laws 
for them, lead them, day by day, to purer life, is 
not enough for one man's work? If any of us 
were absolute lord only of a district of a hundred 
miles square, and were resolved on doing our 
utmost for it ; making it feed as large a number 
of people as possible; making every clod produc- 
tive, and every rock defensive, and every human 
being happy ; should we not have enough on our 
hands think you ? 

But if the ruler has any other aim than this ; 
if, careless of the result of his interference, he 
desire only the authority to interfere ; and, re- 
gardless of what is ill-done or well-done, cares 
only that it shall be done at his bidding ; — if he 



120 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

would rather do two hundred miles' space of mis- 
chief, than one hundred miles' space of good, of 
course he will try to add to his territory; and to 
add inimitably. But does he add to his power? 
Do you call it power in a child, if he is allowed 
to play with the wheels and bands of some vast 
engine, pleased with their murmur and whirl, till 
his unwise touch, wandering where it ought not, 
scatters beam and wheel into ruin ? Yet what 
machine is so vast, so incognizable, as the working 
of the mind of a nation ; what child's touch so 
wanton, as the word of a selfish king? And yet, 
how long have we allowed the historian to speak 
of the extent of the calamity a man causes, as a 
just ground for his pride ; and to extol him as the 
greatest prince, who is only the centre of the 
widest error. Follow out this thought by your- 
selves ; and you will find that all power, properly 
so called, is wise and benevolent. There may be 
capacity in a drifting fire-ship to destroy a fleet ; 
there may be venom enough in a dead body to 
infect a nation : — but which of you, the most am- 
bitious, would desire a drifting kinghood, robed 
in consuming fire, or a poison-dipped sceptre 
whose touch was mortal ? There is no true po- 
tency, remember, but that of help; nor true am"- 
bition, but ambition to save. 

And then, observe farther, this true power, the 
power of saving, depends neither on multitude of 
men, nor on extent of territory. We are contin- 
ually assuming that nations become strong accord- 
ing to their numbers. They indeed become so, 
if those numbers can be made of one mind ; but 



JVA/?. 1 2 1 

how are you sure you can stay them in one mind, 
and keep them from having north and south 
minds? Grant them unanimous, how know you 
they will be unanimous in right? If they are 
unanimous in wrong, the more they are, essen- 
tially the weaker they are. Or, suppose that they 
can neither be of one mind, nor of two minds, 
but can only be of 7io mind ? Suppose they are a 
mere helpless mob ; tottering into precipitant 
catastrophe, like a waggon -load of stones when the 
wheel comes off. Dangerous enough for their 
neighbors, certainly, but not ''powerful." 

Neither does strength depend on extent of ter- 
ritory, any more than upon number of popula- 
tion. Take up your maps when you go home this 
evening, — put the cluster of British Isles beside 
the mass of South America ; and then consider 
whether any race of men need care how much 
ground they stand upon. The strength is in the 
men, and in their unity and virtue, not in their 
standing room : a little group of wise hearts is 
better than a wilderness full of fools ; and only 
that nation gains true territory, which gains itself. 

And now for the brief practical outcome of all 
this. Remember, no government is ultimately 
strong, but in proportion to its kindness and jus- 
tice ; and that a nation does not strengthen, by 
merely multiplying and diffusing itself. We have 
not strengthened as yet, by multiplying into 
America. Nay, even when it has not to encoun- 
ter the separating conditions of emigration, a na- 
tion need not boast itself of multiplying on its 
own ground, if it multiplies only as flies or locusts 



122 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

do, with the god of flies for its god. It multi- 
plies its strength only by increasing as one great 
family, in perfect fellowship and brotherhood. 
And lastly, it does not strengthen itself by seizing 
dominion over races whom it cannot benefit. 
Austria is not strengthened, but weakened, by her 
grasp of Lombardy ; and whatever apparent in- 
crease of majesty and of wealth may have accrued 
to us from the possession of India, whether these 
prove to us ultimately power or weakness, depends 
wholly on the degree in which our influence on 
the native race shall be benevolent and exalting. 

But, as it is at their own peril that any race ex- 
tends their dominion in mere desire of power, so 
it is at their own still greater peril that they refuse 
to undertake aggressive war, according to their 
force, whenever they are assured that their author- 
ity would be helpful and protective. Nor need 
you listen to any sophistical objection of the im- 
possibility of knowing when a people's help is 
needed, or when not. Make your national con- 
science clean, and your national eyes will soon be 
clear. No man who is truly ready to take part in 
a noble quarrel will ever stand long in doubt by 
whom, or in what cause, his aid is needed. I 
hold it my duty to make no political statement of 
any special bearing in this presence; but I tell you 
broadly and boldly, that, within these last ten 
years, we English have, as a knightly nation, lost 
our spurs : we have fought where we should not 
have fought, for gain ; and we have been passive 
where we should not have been passive, for fear. 
I tell you that the principle of non-intervention, 



WA/?. 123 

as now preached among us, is as selfish and cruel 
as the worst frenzy of conquest, and differs from 
it only by being not only malignant, but das- 
tardly. 

I know, however, that my opinions on this sub- 
ject differ too widely from those ordinarily held, 
to be any farther intruded upon you ; and there- 
fore I pass lastly to examine the conditions of the 
third kind of noble war ; — war waged simply for 
defence of the country in which we were born, 
and for the maintenance and execution of her 
laws, by whomsoever threatened or defied. It is 
to this duty that I suppose most men entering the 
army consider themselves in reality to be bound, 
and I want you now to reflect what the laws of 
mere defence are; and what the soldier's duty, 
as now understood, or supposed to be understood. 
You have solemnly devoted yourselves to be 
English soldiers, for the guardianship of England. 
I want you to feel what this vow of yours indeed 
means, or is gradually coming to mean. 

You take it upon you, first, while you are senti- 
mental schoolboys ; you go into your military 
convent, or barracks, just as a girl goes into her 
convent while she is a sentimental schoolgirl; 
neither of you then know what you are about, 
though both the good soldiers and the good nuns 
make the best of it afterwards. You don't under- 
stand perhaps why I call you *' sentimental " 
schoolboys, when you go into the army? Be- 
cause, on the whole, it is love of adventure, of 
excitement, of fine dress and of the pride of fame, 
all which are sentimental motives, which chiefly 



124 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 



i 



make a boy like going into the Guards better than 
into a counting-house. You fancy, perhaps, that 
there is a severe sense of duty mixed with these 
peacocky motives ? And in the best of you, there 
is; but do not think that it is principal. If you 
cared to do your duty to your country in a prosaic 
and unsentimental way, depend upon it, there is 
now truer duty to be done in raising harvests, than 
in burning them ; more in building houses, than 
in shelling them — more in winning money by 
your own work, wherewith to help men, than in 
taxing other people's work, for money wherewith 
to slay men ; more duty finally, in honest and un- 
selfish living than in honest and unselfish dying, 
■^hough that seems to your boys' eyes the bravest. 
So far then, as for your own honor, and the honor 
of your families, you choose brave death in a red 
coat before brave life in a black one, you are sen- 
tirnentar; and now see what this passionate vow 
of yours comes to. For a little while you ride, 
and you hunt tigers or savages, you shoot, and are 
shot ; you are happy, and proud, always, and 
honored and wept if you die ; and you are satis- 
fied with your life, and with the end of it; believ- 
ing, on the whole, that good rather than harm of 
it comes to others, and much pleasure to you. 

But as the sense of duty enters into your form- 
ing minds, the vow takes another aspect. You 
find that you have put yourselves into the hand of 
your country as a weapon. You have vowed to 
strike, when she bids you, and to stay scabbarded 
when she bids you ; all that you need answer for 
is, that you fail not in her grasp. And there is 



IVAI^. 



125 



goodness in this, and greatness, if you can trust 
the hand and heart of the Britomart who has 
braced you to her side, and are assured that when 
she leaves you sheathed in darkness, there is no 
need for your flash to the sun. But remember, 
good and noble as this state may be, it is a state 
of slavery. There are different kinds of slaves and 
different masters. Some slaves are scourged to 
their work by whips, others are scourged to it by 
restlessness or ambition. It does not matter what 
the whip is ; it is none the less a whip, because 
you have cut thongs for it out of your own souls : 
the fact, so far, of slavery, is in being driven to 
your work without thought, at another's bidding. 
Again, some slaves are bought with money, and 
others with praise. It matters not what the pur- 
chase-money is. The distinguishing sign of 
slavery is to have a price, and be bought for it. 
Again, it matters not what kind of work you are 
set on ; some slaves are set to forced diggings, 
others to forced marches ; some dig furrows, others 
field-works, and others graves. Some press the 
juice of reeds, and some the juice of vines, and 
some the blood of men. The fact of the captivity 
is the same whatever work we are set upon, though 
the fruits of the toil may be different. 

But, remember, in thus vowing ourselves to be 
the slaves of any master, it ought to be some sub- 
ject of forethought with us, what work he is 
likely to put us upon. You may think that the 
whole duty of a soldier is to be passive, that it is 
the country you have left behind who is to com- 
mand, and you have only to obey. But are you 



126 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

sure that you have left all your country behind, or 
that the part of it you have so left is indeed the 
best part of it? Suppose — and, remember, it is 
quite conceivable — that you yourselves are indeed 
the best part of England ; that you, who have 
become the slaves, ought to have been the 
masters; and that those who are the masters, 
ought to have been the slaves ! If it is a noble 
and whole-hearted England, whose bidding you 
are bound to do, it is well ; but if you are your- 
selves the best of her heart, and the England you 
have left be but a half-hearted England, how say 
you of your obedience ? You were too proud to 
become shop-keepers : are you satisfied then to 
become the servants of shop-keepers? You were 
too proud to become merchants or farmers your- 
selves : will you have merchants or farmers then 
for your field marshals ? You had no gifts of 
special grace for Exeter Hall : will you have 
some gifted person thereat for your commander- 
in-chief, to judge of your work, and reward it ? 
You imagine yourselves to be the army of 
England : how if you should find yourselves, at 
last, only the police of her manufacturing towns, 
and the beadles of her little Bethels? 

It is not so yet, nor will be so, I trust, forever ; 
but what I want you to see, and to be assured of, 
is, that the ideal of soldiership is not mere passive 
obedience and bravery ; that, so far from this, no 
country is in a healthy state which has separated, 
even in a small degree, her civil from her military 
power. All states of the world, however great, 
fall at once when they use mercenary armies ; and 



PP'AJ^. 127 

although it is a less instant form of error (because 
involving no national taint of cowardice), it is yet 
an error no less ultimately fatal — it is the error 
especially of modern times, of which we cannot 
yet know all the calamitous consequences — to 
take away the best blood and strength of the 
nation, all the soul-substance of it that is brave, 
and careless of reward, and scornful of pain, and 
faithful in trust ; and to cast that into steel, and 
make a mere sword of it ; taking away its voice 
and will ; but to keep the worst part of the nation 
— whatever is cowardly, avaricious, sensual, and 
faithless — and to give to this the voice, to this 
the authority, to this the chief privilege, where 
there is least capacity, of thought. 

The fulfillment of your vow for the defence of 
England will by no means consist in carrying out 
such a system. You are not true soldiers, if you 
only mean to stand at a shop door, to protect 
shop-boys who are cheating inside. A soldier's 
vow to his country is that he will die for the 
guardianship of her domestic virtue, of her 
righteous laws, and of her any way challenged or 
endangered honor. A state without virtue, with- 
out laws, and without honor, he is bound nof to 
defend ; nay, bound to redress by his own right 
hand that which he sees to be base in her. 

So sternly is this the law of Nature and life, that 
a nation once utterly corrupt can only be redeemed 
by a military despotism — never by talking, nor by 
its free effort. And the health of any state con- 
sists simply in this : that in it, those who are wis- 
est shall also be strongest ; its rulers should be also 



J 28 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

its soldiers ; or, rather, by force of intellect more 
than of sword, its soldiers also its rulers. What- 
ever the hold which the aristocracy of England 
has on the heart of England, in that they are still 
always in front of her battles, this hold will not be 
enough, unless they are also in front of her 
thoughts. And truly her thoughts need good 
captain's leading now, if ever ! Do you know 
what, by this beautiful division of labor (h'er brave 
men fighting, and her cowards thinking), she has 
come at last to think ? Here is a bit of paper in 
my hand,* a good one too, and an honest one ; 
quite representative of the best common public 
thought of England at this moment; and it is 
holding forth in one of its leaders upon our "so- 
cial welfare," — upon our '^ vivid life" — upon the 
"political supremacy of Great Britain." And 
what do you think all these are owing to? To 
what our English sires have done for us, and 
taught us, age after age ? No : not to that. To 
our honesty of heart, or coolness of head, or 
steadiness of will ? No : not to these. To our 
thinkers, or our statesmen, or our poets, or our 



* I do not care to refer to the journal quoted, because the article was 
unworthy of its general tone, though in order to enable the audience to 
verify the quoted sentence, I left the number containing it on the table, 
when I gave this lecture. But a saying of Baron Liebig's, quoted at the 
head of a leader on the same subject in the Daily Telegraph of January 
II, 1866, summarily digests and presents the maximum folly of modern 
thought in this respect. " Civilization," says the Baron, " is the econ- 
omy of power, and English power is coal." Not altogether so, my 
chemical friend. Civilization is the making of civil persons, which is a 
kind of distillation of which alembics are incapable, and does not at all 
imply the turning of a small company of gentlemen into a large company 
of ironmongers. And English power (what little of it may be left) is by 
no means coal, but, indeed, of that which, " when the whole world turns 
to coal, then chiefly lives." 



WAR. 



129 



captains, or our martyrs, or the patient labor of 
our poor ? No : not to these ; or at least not to 
these in any chief measure. Nay, says the journal, 
''more than any agency, it is the cheapness and 
abundance of our coal which have made us what 
we are." If it be so, then "ashes to ashes" be 
our epitaph ! and the sooner the better. 

Gentlemen of England, if ever you would have 
your country breathe the pure breath of heaven 
again, and receive again a soul into her body, in- 
stead of rotting into a carcase, blown up in the 
belly with carbonic acid (and great //^(2/way), you 
must think, and feel, for your England, as well as 
fight for her : you must teach her that all the true 
greatness she ever had, or ever can have, she won 
while her fields were green and her faces ruddy ; — 
that greatness is still possible for Englishmen, even 
though the ground be not hollow under their feet, 
nor the sky black over their heads. 

And bear with me you soldier youths, who are 
thus in all ways the hope of your country ; or must 
be, if she have any hope : if I urge you with rude 
earnestness to remember that your fitness for all 
future trust depends upon what you are now. No 
good soldier in his old age was ever careless or 
indolent in his youth. Many a giddy and 
thoughtless boy has become a good bishop, or a 
good lawyer, or a good merchant ; but no such an 
one ever became a good general. I challenge you, 
in all history, to find a record of a good soldier 
who was not grave and earnest in his youth. 
And, in general, I have no patience with people 
who talk about "the thoughtlessness of youth" 



130 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 



indulgently. I had infinitely rather hear of 
thoughtless old age, and the indulgence due to 
that. When a man has done his work, and 
nothing can any way be materially altered in his 
fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with his fate, 
if he will ; but what excuse can you find for wil- 
fulness of thought, at the very time when every 
crisis of future fortune hangs on your decisions? 
A youth thoughtless ! when all the happiness of 
his home forever depends on the chances, or the 
passions, of an hour ! A youth thoughtless ! 
when the career of all his days depends on the 
opportunity of a moment ! A youth thoughtless ! 
when his every act is as a torch to the laid train 
of future conduct, and every imagination a foun- 
tain of life or death ! Be thoughtless in any after 
years, rather than now — though, indeed, there is 
only one place where a man may be nobly thought- 
less, — his deathbed. No thinking should ever be 
left to be done there. 

Having, then, resolved that you will not waste 
recklessly, but earnestly use, these early days of 
yours, remember that all the duties of her chil- 
dren to England may be summed in two words — 
industry, and honor. I say first, industry, for it is 
in this that soldier youth are especially tempted to 
fail. Yet, surely, there is no reason, because your 
life may possibly or probably be shorter than other 
men's, that you should therefore waste more reck- 
lessly the portion of it that is granted you ; neither 
do the duties of your profession, which require 
you to keep your bodi-es strong, in any wise involve 
the keeping of your minds weak. So far from 



that, the experience, the hardship, and the activity 
of a soldier's life render his powers of thought 
more accurate than those of other men ; and while, 
for others, all knowledge is often little more than 
a means of amusement, there is no form of science 
which a soldier may not at some time or other 
find bearing on business of life and death. A 
young mathematician may be excused for languor 
in studying curves to be described only with a. 
pencil ; but not in tracing those which are to be 
described with a rocket. Your knowledge of a 
wholesome herb may involve the feeding of an 
army ; and acquaintance with an obscure point of 
geography, the success of a campaign. Never- 
waste an instant's time, therefore ; the sin of idle^ 
ness is a thousand-fold greater in you than in other- 
youths ; for the fates of those who will one day 
be under your command hang upon your knowl- 
edge ; lost moments now will be lost lives then, 
and every instant which you carelessly take for- 
play, you buy with blood. 

But there is one way of wasting time, of all the 
vilest, because it wastes, not time only, but the 
interest and energy of your minds. Of all the 
ungentlemanly habits into which you can fall, the 
vilest is betting, or interesting yourselves in the 
issues of betting. It unites nearly every condition 
of folly and vice ; you concentrate your interest 
upon a matter of chance, instead of upon a subject 
of true knowledge; and you back opinions which 
you have no grounds for forming, merely because 
they are your own. All the insolence of egotism 
is in this; and so far as the love of excitement is^ 



132 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

complicated with the hope of winning money, you 
turn yourselves into the basest sort of tradesmen 
— those wlio live by speculation. Were there no 
other ground for industry, this would be a suffi- 
cient one; that it protected you from the tempta- 
tion to so scandalous a vice. Work faithfully, 
and you will put yourselves in possession of a 
glorious and enlarging happiness; not such as can 
be won by the speed of a horse, or marred by the 
obliquity of a ball. 

First, then, by industry you must fulfil your vow 
to your country ; but all industry and earnestness 
will be useless unless they are consecrated by your 
resolution to be in all things men of honor ; not 
honor in the common sense only, but in the high- 
est. Rest on the force of the two main words in 
the great verse, integer vitae, scelerisque purus. 
You have vowed your life to England ; give it her 
wholly — a bright, stainless, perfect life — a knightly 
life. Because you have to fight with machines 
instead of lances, there may be a necessity for 
more ghastly danger, but there is none for less 
worthiness of character, than in olden time. You 
may be true knights yet, though perhaps not equites ; 
you may have to call yourselves " cannonry " in- 
stead of ''chivalry," but that is no reason why 
you should not call yourselves true men. So the 
first thing you have to see to in becoming soldiers 
is that you make yourselves wholly true. Courage 
is a mere matter of course among any ordinarily 
well-born youths; but neither truth nor gentleness 
is matter of course. You must bind them like 
shields about your necks; you must write them on 



PVAT^. 133 

the tables of your hearts. Though it be not ex- 
acted of you, yet exact it of yourselves, this vow of 
stainless truth. Your hearts are, if you leave them 
unstirred, as tombs in which a god lies buried. 
Vow yourselves crusaders to redeem that sacred 
sepulchre. And remember, before all things — for 
no other memory will be so protective of you — 
that the highest law of this knightly truth is that 
under which it is vowed to women. Whomsoever 
else you deceive, whomsoever you injure, whom- 
soever you leave unaided, you must not deceive, 
nor injure, nor leave unaided, according to your 
power, any woman of whatever rank. Believe me, 
every virtue of the higher phases of manly char- 
acter begins in this; — in truth and modesty before 
the face of all maidens ; in truth and pity, or truth 
and reverence, to all womanhood. 

And now let me turn for a moment to you, — 
wives and maidens, who are the souls of soldiers ; 
to you, — mothers, who have devoted your chil- 
dren to the great hierarchy of war. Let me ask 
you to consider what part you have to take for the 
aid of those who love you ; for if you fail in your 
part they cannot fulfil theirs; such absolute help- 
mates you are that no man can stand without that 
help, nor labor in his own strength. 

I know your hearts, and that the truth of them 
never fails when an hour of trial comes which you 
recognize for such. But you know not when the 
hour of trial first finds you, nor when it verily finds 
you. You imagine that you are only called upon 
to wait and to suffer ; to surrender and to mourn. 
You know that you must not weaken the hearts 



^34 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE, 



of your husbands and lovers, even by the one fear 
of which those hearts are capable, — the fear of 
parting from you, or of causing you grief. 
Through weary years of separation ; through fear- 
ful expectancies of unknown fate ; through the 
tenfold bitterness ot the sorrow which might so 
■easily have been joy, and the tenfold yearning for 
glorious life struck down in its prime — through 
all these agonies you fail not, and never will fail. 
But your trial is not in these. To be heroic in 
danger is little ; — you are Englishwomen. To 
be heroic in change and sway of fortune is 
little ; — for do you not love ? To be patient 
through the great chasm and pause of loss is 
little ; — for do you not still love in heaven ? But 
to be heroic in happiness ; to bear yourselves 
gravely and righteously in the dazzling of the 
sunshine of morning; not to forget the God in 
whom you trust, when He gives you most ; not to 
fail those who trust you, when they seem to need 
you least ; this is the difficult fortitude. It is not 
in the pining of absence, not in the peril of 
battle, not in the wasting of sickness, that your 
prayer should be most passionate, or your guar- 
dianship most tender. Pray, mothers and maidens, 
for your young soldiers in the bloom of their 
pride ; pray for them, while the only dangers 
round them are in their own wayward wills; 
watch you, and pray, when they have to face, not 
death, but temptation. But it is this fortitude 
also for which there is the crowning reward. 
Believe me, the whole course and character of 
your lovers' lives is in your hands ; what you 



WA/^. 



135 



would have them be, they shall be, if you not 
only desire to have them so, but deserve to have 
them so ; for they are but mirrors in which you 
will see yourselves imaged. If you are frivolous, 
they will be so also ; if you have no understand- 
ing of the scope of their duty, they also will for- 
get it ; they will listen, — they can listen, — to no 
other interpretation of it than that uttered from 
your lips. Bid them be brave ; — they will be 
brave for you ; bid them be cowards ; and how 
noble soever they be ; — they will quail for you. 
Bid them be wise, and they will be wise for you ; 
mock at their counsel, they will be fools for you : 
such and so absolute is your rule over them. You 
fancy, perhaps, as you have been told so often, 
that a wife's rule should only be over her hus- 
band's house, not over his mind. Ah, no ! the 
true rule is just the reverse of that ; a true wife, 
in her husband's house, is his servant ; it is in his 
heart that she is queen. Whatever of best he can 
conceive, it is her part to be; whatever of highest 
he can hope, it is hers to promise ; all that is 
dark in him she must purge into purity ; all that 
is failing in him she must strengthen into truth : 
from her, through all the world's clamor, he must 
win his praise ; in her, through all the world's 
warfare, he must find his peace. 

And, now, but one word more. You may won- 
der, perhaps, that I have spoken all this night in 
praise of war. Yet, truly, if it might be, I, for 
one, would fain join in the cadence of hammer- 
strokes that should beat swords into ploughshares : 
and that this cannot be, is not the fault of us 



136 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

men. It is your fault. Wholly yours. Only by 
your command, or by your permission, can any 
contest take place among us. And the real, final, 
reason for all the poverty, misery, and rage of 
battle, throughout Europe, is simply that you 
women, however good, however religious, however 
self-sacrificing for those whom you love, are too 
selfish and too thoughtless to take pains for any 
creature out of your own immediate circles. You 
fancy that you are sorry for the pain of others. 
Now I just tell you this, that if the usual course • 
of war, instead of unroofing peasants' houses, and 
ravaging peasants' fields, merely broke the china 
upon your own drawing-room tables, no war in 
civilized countries would last a week. I tell you 
more, that at whatever moment you choose to put 
a period to war, you could do it with less trouble 
than you take any day to go out to dinner. You 
know, or at least you might know if you would 
think, that every battle you hear of has made 
many widows and orphans. We have, none of 
us, heart enough truly to mourn with these. But 
at least we might put on the outer symbols of 
mourning with them. Let but every Christian 
lady who has conscience toward God, vow that 
she will mourn, at least outwardly, for His killed 
creatures. Your praying is useless, and your 
churchgoing mere mockery of God, if you have 
not plain obedience in you enough for this. Let 
every lady in the upper classes of civili.-'.ed Europe 
simply vow that, while any cruel war proceeds, 
she will wear black ; — a mute's black, — with no 
jewel, no ornament, no excuse for, or evasion into 



prettiness. — I tell you again, no war would last a 
week. 

And lastly. You women of England are all 
now shrieking with one voice, — you and your 
clergymen together, — because you hear of your 
Bibles being attacked. If you choose to obey 
your Bibles, you will never care who attacks 
them. It is just because you never fulfil a single 
downright precept of the Book, that you are so 
careful for its credit : and just because you don't 
care to obey its whole words, that you are so par- 
ticular about the letters of them. The Bible tells 
you to dress plainly, — and you are mad for finery; 
the Bible tells you to have pity on the poor, — and 
you crush them under your carriage-wheels ; the 
Bible tells you to do judgment and justice, — and 
you do not know, nor care to know, so much as 
what the Bible word ''justice" means. Do but 
learn so much of God's truth as that comes to ; 
know what He means when He tells you to be 
just : and teach your sons, that their bravery is 
but a fool's boast, and their deeds but a fire- 
brand's tossing, unless they are indeed Just men, 
and Perfect in the Fear of God ; — and you will 
soon have no more war, unless it be indeed such 
as is willed by Him, of whom, though Prince of 
Peace, it is also written, "In Righteousness He 
doth judge, and make war." ~" — — 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 



(•39) 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 



141 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 

I WOULD fain have left to the frank expression 
of the moment, but fear I could not have found 
clear words — I cannot easily find them, even de- 
liberately, — to tell you how glad I am, and yet 
how ashamed, to accept your permission to speak 
to you. Ashamed of appearing to think that I 
can tell you any truth which you have not more 
deeply felt than I ; but glad in the thought that 
my less experience, and way of life sheltered 
from the trials, and free from the responsibilities 
of yours, may have left me with something of a 
child's power of help to you; a sureness of hope, 
which may perhaps be the one thing that can be 
helpful to men who have done too much not to 
have often failed in doing all tliat they desired. 
And indeed, even the most hopeful of us, cannot 
but now be in many things apprehensive. For 
this at least we all know too well, that we are on 
the eve of a great political crisis, if not of po- 
litical change. That a struggle is approaching 
between the newly-risen power of democracy and 
the apparently departing power of feudalism ; and 
another struggle, no less imminent, and far more 
dangerous, between wealth and pauperism. These 
two quarrels are constantly thought of as the 
same. They are being fought together, and an 
apparently common interest unites for the most 



142 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 



part the millionnaire with the noble, in resistance 
to a multitude, crying, part of it for bread and 
part of it for liberty. 

And yet no two quarrels can be more dis- 
tinct. Riches — so far from being necessary to 
noblesse — are adverse to it. So utterly adverse, 
that the first character of all the Nobilities which 
have founded great dynasties in the world is to 
be poor; — often poor by oath — always poor by 
generosity. And of every true knight in the 
chivalric ages, the first thing history tells you is, 
that he never kept treasure for himself. 

Thus the causes of wealth and noblesse are not 
the same ; but opposite. On the other hand, the 
causes of anarchy and of the poor are not the 
same, but opposite. Side by side, in the same 
rank, are now indeed set the pride that revolts 
against authority, and the misery that appeals 
against avarice. But, so far from being a com- 
mon cause, all anarchy is the forerunner of 
poverty, and all prosperity begins in obedience. 
So that, thus, it has become impossible to give 
due support to the cause of order, without seem- 
ing to countenance injury; and impossible to 
plead justly the claims of sorrow, without seeming 
to plead also for those of license. 

Let me try, then, to put in very brief terms, 
the real plan of this various quarrel, and the truth 
of the cause on each side. Let us face that full 
truth, whatever it may be, and decide what part, 
according to our power, we should take in the 
quarrel. 

First. For eleven hundred years, all but five, 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 143 

since Charlemagne set on his head the Lombard 
crown, the body of European people have submit- 
ted patiently to be governed ; generally by kings 
— always by single leaders of some kind. But for 
the last fifty years they have begun to suspect, and 
of late they have many of them concluded, that 
they have been on the whole ill-governed, or mis- 
governed, by their kings. Whereupon they say, 
more and more widely, *'Let us henceforth have 
no kings; and no government at all." 

Now we said, we must face the full truth of the 
matter, in order to see what we are to do. And 
the truth is that the people have been misgov- 
erned; — that very little is to be said, hitherto, for 
most of their masters — and that certainly in many 
places they will try their new system of ''no 
masters: " — and as that arrangement will be de- 
lightful to all foolish persons, and, at first, profit- 
able to all wicked ones, — and as these classes are 
not wanting or unimportant in any human society, 
— the experiment is likely to be tried extensively. 
And the world may be quite content to endure 
much suffering with this fresh hope, and retain 
its faith in anarchy, whatever comes of it, till it 
can endure no more. 

Then, secondly. The people have begun to 
suspect that one particular form of this past mis- 
government has been, that their masters have set 
them to do all the work, and have themselves taken 
all the wages. In a word, that what was called 
governing them, meant only wearing fine clothes, 
and living on good fare at their expense. And I 
am sorry to say, the people are quite right in this 



144 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE, 



opinion also. If you inquire into the vital fact 
of the matter, this you will find to be the constant 
structure of European society for the thousand 
years of the feudal system ; it was divided into 
peasants who lived by working ; priests who lived 
by begging; and knights who lived by pillaging; 
and as the luminous public mind becomes gradu- 
ally cognizant of these facts, it will assuredly not 
suffer things to be altogether arranged that way 
any more ; and the devising of other ways will be 
an agitating business ; especially because the first 
impression of the intelligent populace is, that 
whereas, in the dark ages, half the nation lived 
idle, in the bright ages to come, the whole of it 
may. 

Now, thirdly — and here is much the worst phase 
of the crisis. This past system of misgovernment, 
especially during the last three hundred years, has 
prepared, by its neglect, a class among the lower 
orders which it is now peculiarly difficult to govern. 
It deservedly lost their respect — but that was the 
least part of mischief. The deadly part of it 
was, that the lower orders lost their habit, and at 
last their faculty, of respect ; — lost the very capa- 
bility of reverence, which is the most precious 
part of the human soul. Exactly in the degree in 
which you can find creatures greater than your- 
self, to look up to, in that degree, you are enno- 
bled yourself, and, in that degree, happy. If you 
could live always in the presence of archangels, 
you would be happier than in that of men ; but 
even if only in the company of admirable knights 
and beautiful ladies, the more noble and bright 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 



145 



they were, and the more you could reverence their 
virtue, the happier you would be. On the con- 
trary, if you were condemned to live among a 
multitude of idiots, dumb, distorted, and mali- 
cious, you would not be happy in the constant 
sense of your own superiority. Thus all real 
joy and power of progress in humanity depend on 
finding something to reverence, and all the base- 
ness and misery of humanity begin in a habit of 
disdain. Now, by general misgovernment, I re- 
peat, we have created in Europe a vast populace, 
and out of Europe a still vaster one, which has 
lost even the power and conception of reverence ; * 
— which exists only in the worship of itself — • 
which can neither see anything beautiful around 
it, nor conceive anything virtuous above it ; which 
has, towards all goodness and greatness, no other 
feelings than those of the lowest creatures — fear, 
hatred, or hunger ; a populace which has sunk 
below your appeal in their nature, as it has risen 
beyond your power in their multitude ; — whom you 
can now no more charm than you can the adder, 
nor discipline, than you can the summer fly. 

It is a crisis, gentlemen ; and time to think of it. 
I have roughly and broadly put it before you in 
its darkness. Let us look what we may find of 
light. 

Only the other day, in a journal which is a 
fairly representative exponent of the Conservatism 
of our day, and for the most part not at all in 
favor of strikes or other popular proceedings ; 
only about three weeks since, there was a leader, 

* Compare Time and Tide, § 169, and Fors Clavigera, Letter XIV. 
10 



146 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

with this, or a similar, title — '' What is to become 
of the House of Lords ? " It startled me, for it 
seemed as if we were going even faster than I had 
thought, when such a question was put as a sub- 
ject of quite open debate, in a journal meant 
chiefly for the reading of the middle and upper 
classes. Open or not — the debate is near. What 
is to become of them ? And the answer to such 
question depends first on their being able to 
answer another question — ''What is the use of 
them ? " For some time back, I think the theory 
of the nation has been, that they are useful as im- 
pediments to business, so as to give time for sec- 
ond thoughts. But the nation is getting impatient 
of impediments to business ; and certainly, sooner 
or later, will think it needless to maintain these 
expensive obstacles to its humors. And I have 
not heard, either in public, or from any of them- 
selves, a clear expression of their own conception 
of their use. So that it seems thus to become 
needful for all men to tell them, as our one quite 
clear-sighted teacher, Carlyle, has been telling us 
for many a year, that the use of the Lords of a 
country is to govern the country. If they answer 
that use, the country will rejoice in keeping them ; 
if not, that will become of them which must of all 
things found to have lost their serviceableness. 

Here, therefore, is the one question, at this 
crisis, for them, and for us. Will they be lords 
indeed, and give us laws — dukes indeed, and give 
us guiding — princes indeed, and give us begin- 
ning, of truer dynasty, which shall not be soiled 
by covetousness, nor disordered by iniquity? 



THE FUTURE OF EN-GLAND. 147 

Have they themselves sunk so far as not to hope 
this? Are there yet any among them who can 
stand forward with open English brows, and say, 
— So far as in me lies, I will govern with my 
might, not for Dieu et mon Droit, but for the first 
grand reading of the war cry from which that was 
corrupted, ''Dieu et Droit?" Among them I 
know there are some — among you, soldiers of 
England, I know there are many, who can do 
this ; and in you is our trust. I, one of the lower 
people of your country, ask of you in their name, 
— you whom I will not any more call soldiers, but 
by the true name of Knights; — Equites of Eng- 
land, — liow many yet of you are there, knights 
errant now beyond all former fields of danger — 
knights patient now beyond all former endurance ; 
who still retain the ancient and eternal purpose of 
knighthood, to subdue the wicked, and aid the 
weak? To them, be they few or many, we Eng- 
lish people call for help to the wretchedness, and 
for rule over the baseness, of multitudes desolate 
and deceived, shrieking to one another, this new 
gospel of their new religion. *' Let the weak do 
as they can, and the wicked as they will." 

I can hear you saying in your hearts, even the 
bravest of you, "The time is past for all that." 
Gentlemen, it is not so. The time has come for 
more than all that. Hitherto, soldiers have given 
their lives for false fame, and for cruel power. 
The day is now when they must give their lives 
for true fame, and for beneficent power: and the 
work is near every one of you — close beside you — • 
the means of it even thrust into your hands. The 



148 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

people are crying to you for command, and you 
stand there at pause, and silent. You think they 
don't want to be commanded; try them ; deter- 
mine what is needful for them — honorable for 
them ; show it them, promise to bring them to it, 
and they will follow you through fire. " Govern 
us," they cry with one heart, though many 
minds. They can be governed still, these Eng- 
lish ; they are men still ; not gnats, nor serpents. 
They love their old ways yet, and their old mas- 
ters, and their old land. They would fain live in 
it, as many as may stay there, if you will show 
them how, there, to live; — or show them even, 
how, there, like Englishmen, to die. 

'' To live in it, as many as may ! " How many 
do you think may ? Hov/ many can ? How many 
do you want to live there ? As masters, your first 
object must be to increase your power ; and in 
what does the power of a country consist ? Will 
you have dominion over its stones, or over its 
clouds, or over its souls ? What do you mean by a 
great nation, but a great multitude of men who 
are true to each other, and strong, and of worth ? 
Now you can increase the multitude only definitely 
— your island has only so much standing room — 
but you can increase the worth /'/zdefinitely. It is 
but a little island ; — suppose, little as it is, you 
were to fill it with friends ? You may, and that 
easily. You must, and that speedily ; or there 
will be an end to this England of ours, and to all 
its loves and enmities. 

To fill this little island with true friends — men 
brave, wise and happy ! Is it so impossible, think 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 



149 



you, after the world's eighteen hundred years of 
Christianity, and our own thousand years of toil, 
to fill only this little white gleaming crag with 
happy creatures, helpful to each other ? Africa, 
and India, and the Brazilian wide-watered plain, 
are these not wide enough for the ignorance of our 
race? have they not space enough for its pain? 
Must we remain here also savage, — he7'e at enmity 
with each other, — here foodless, houseless, in rags, 
in dust, and without hope, as thousands and tens 
of thousands of us are lying? Do not think it, 
gentlemen. The thought that it is inevitable is 
the last infidelity ; infidelity not to God only, but 
to every creature and every law that He has made. 
Are we to think that the earth was only shaped to 
be a globe of torture; and that there cannot be 
one spot of it where peace can rest, or justice 
reign? Where are men ever to be happy, if not 
in England ? by whom shall they ever be taught 
to do right, if not by you ? Are we not of a race 
first among the strong ones of the earth;, the 
blood in us incapable of weariness, unconquerable 
by grief? Have we not a history of which we can 
hardly think without becoming insolent in our just 
pride of it? Can we dare, without passing every 
limit of courtesy to other nations, to say how 
much more we have to be proud of in our ances- 
tors than they ? Among our ancient monarchs, 
great crimes stand out as monstrous and strange. 
But their valor, and, according to their under- 
standing, their benevolence, are constant. The 
Wars of the Roses, which are as a fearful crimson 
shadow on our land, represent the normal condi- 



150 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

tion of other nations ; while from the days of the 
Heptarchy downwards we have had examples given 
us, in all ranks, of the most varied and exalted 
virtue ; a heap of treasure that no moth can cor- 
rupt, and which even our traitorship, if we are to 
become traitors to it, cannot sully. 

And this is the race, then, that we know not 
any more how to govern ! and this the history 
which we are to behold broken off by sedition ! 
and this is the country, of all others, where life is 
to become difficult to the honest, and ridiculous 
to the wise ! And the catastrophe, forsooth, is to 
come just when we have been making swiftest 
progress beyond the wisdom and wealth of the 
past. Our cities are a wilderness of spinning 
wheels instead of palaces ; yet the people have not 
clothes. We have blackened every leaf of English 
greenwood with ashes, and the people die of cold; 
our harbors are a forest of merchant ships, and the 
people die of hunger. 

Whose fault is it ? Yours, gentlemen ; yours 
only. You alone can feed them, and clothe, and 
bring into their right minds, for you only can 
govern — that is to say, you only can educate 
them. 

Educate, or govern, they are one and the same 
word. Education does not mean teaching people 
to know what they do not know. It means teach- 
ing them to behave as they do not behave. And 
the true ''compulsory education" which the 
people now ask of you is not catechism, but drill. 
It is not teaching the youth of England the shapes 
of letters and the tricks of numbers; and then 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 



151 



leaving them to turn their arithmetic to roguery, 
and their literature to lust. It is, on the contrary, 
training them into the perfect exercise and kingly 
continence of their bodies and souls. It is a painful, 
continual, and difficult work ; to be done by 
kindness, by watching, by warning, by precept, 
and by praise, — but above all — by example. 

Compulsory! Yes, by all means! '*Go ye 
out into the highways and hedges, and compel 
them to come in." Compulsory! Yes, and 
gratis also. Dei Gratia, they must be taught, as, 
Dei Gratia, you are set to teach them. I hear 
strange talk continually, ''how difficult it is to 
make people pay for being educated ! " Why, I 
should think so ! Do you make your children 
pay for their education, or do you give it them 
compulsorily, and gratis? You do not expect 
them to pay you for their teaching, except by be- 
coming good children. Why should you expect 
a peasant to pay for his, except by becoming a 
good man ? — payment enough, I think, if we 
knew it. Payment enough to himself, as to us. 
For that is another of our grand popular mistakes 
— people are always thinking of education as a 
means of livelihood. Education is not a profitable 
business, but a costly one ; nay, even the best at- 
tainments of it are always unprofitable, in any 
terms of coin. No nation ever made its bread 
either by its great arts, or its great wisdoms. By 
its minor arts or manufactures, by its practical 
knowledges, yes : but its noble scholarship, its 
noble philosophy, and its noble art, are always to 
be bought as a treasure, not sold for a livelihood. 



152 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 



You do not learn that you may live — you live 
that you may learn. You are to spend on Na- 
tional Education, and to be spent for it, and to 
make by it, not more money, but better men ; — 
to get into this British Island the greatest possible 
number of good and brave Englishmen. They 
are to be your " money's worth." 

But where is the money to come from? Yes, 
that is to be asked. Let us, as quite the first 
business in this our national crisis, look not only 
into our affairs, but into our accounts, and obtain 
some general notion how we annually spend our 
money, and what we are getting for it. Observe, 
I do not mean to inquire into the public revenue 
only ; of that some account is rendered already. 
But let us do the best we can to set down the 
items of the national private expenditure ; and 
know what we spend altogether, and how. 

To begin with this matter of education. You 
probably have nearly all seen the admirable lecture 
lately given by Captain Maxse, at Southampton. 
It contains a clear statement of the facts at 
present ascertained as to our expenditure in that 
respect. It appears that of our public moneys, 
for every pound that we spend on education we 
spend twelve either in charity or punishment ; — 
ten millions a year in pauperism and crime, and 
eight hundred thousand in instruction. Now 
Captain Maxse adds to this estimate of ten 
millions public money spent on crime and want, 
a more or less conjectural sum of eight millions 
for private charities. My impression is that this 
is much beneath the truth, but at all events it 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 153 

leaves out of consideration much the heaviest and 
saddest form of charity — the maintenance, by the 
working members of families, of the unfortunate 
or ill-conducted persons wiiom the general course 
of misrule now leaves helpless to be the burden 
of the rest. 

Now I want to get first at some, I do not say 
approximate, but at all events some suggestive, 
estimate of the quantity of real distress and mis- 
guided life in this country. Then next, I want 
some fairly representative estimate of our private 
expenditure in luxuries. We won't spend more, 
publicly, it appears, than eight hundred thousand 
a year, on educating men, gratis. I want to 
know, as nearly as possible, what we spend 
privately a year, in educating horses gratis. Let 
us, at least, quit ourselves in this from the taunt 
of Rabshakeh, and see that for every horse we 
train also a horseman ; and that the rider be at 
least as high-bred as the horse, not jockey, but 
chevalier. Again, we spend eight hundred 
thousand, which is certainly a great deal of 
money, in making rough minds bright. I want 
to know how much we spend annually in making 
rough stones bright ; that is to say, what may be 
the united annual sum, or near it, of our jewel- 
lers' bills. So much we pay for educating chil- 
dren gratis ; — how much for educating diamonds 
gratis? and which pays best for brightening, the 
spirit, or the charcoal ? Let us get those two 
items set down with some sincerity, and a few 
more of the same kind. Publicly set down. We 
must not be ashamed of the way we spend our 



154 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 



money. If our right hand is not to know what 
our left does, it must not be because it would be 
ashamed if it did. 

That is, therefore, quite the first practical thing 
to be done. Let every man who wishes well to 
his country, render it yearly an account of his 
income, and of the main heads of his expenditure; 
or, if he is ashamed to do so, let him no more 
impute to the poor their poverty as a crime, nor 
set them to break stones in order to frighten 
them from committing it. To lose money ill is 
indeed often a crime ; but to get it ill is a worse 
one, and to spend it ill, worst of all. You ob- 
ject, Lords of England, to increase, to the poor, 
the wages you give them, because they spend 
them, you say, unadvisedly. Render them, 
therefore, an account of the wages which they 
gwQ you ; and show them, by your example, how 
to spend theirs, to the last farthing, advisedly. 

It is indeed time to make this an acknowledged 
subject of instruction, to the working-man, — how 
to spend his wages. For, gentlemen, we 7nust 
give that instruction, whether we will or no, one 
way or the other. We have given it in years 
gone by; and now we find fault with our 
peasantry for having been too docile, and profited 
too shrewdly by our tuition. Only a few days 
since I had a letter from the wife of a village 
rector, a man of common sense and kindness, 
who was greatly troubled in his mind because it 
was precisely the men who got highest wages in 
summer that came destitute to his door in the 
winter. Destitute, and of riotous temper — for 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 155 

their method of spending wages in their period 
of prosperity was by sitting two days a week in 
the tavern parlor, ladling port wine, not out of 
bowls, but out of buckets. Well, gentlemen, 
who taught them that method of festivity? Thirty 
years ago, I, a most inexperienced freshman, went 
to my first college supper ; at the head of the 
table sat a nobleman of high promise and of 
admirable powers, since dead of palsy ; there also 
we had in the midst of us, not buckets, indeed, 
but bowls as large as buckets ; there also, we 
helped ourselves with ladles. There (for this be- 
ginning of college education was compulsory), 
I, choosing ladlefuls of punch instead of claret, 
because I was then able, un perceived, to pour 
them into my waistcoat instead of down my 
throat, stood it out to the end, and helped to 
carry foiir of my fellow students, one of them the 
son of the head of a college, head foremost, down 
stairs and home. 

Such things are no more ; but the fruit of 
them remains, and will for many a day to come. 
The laborers whom you cannot now shut out of 
the ale-house are only the too faithful disciples 
of the gentlemen who were wont to shut them- 
selves into the dining-room. The gentlemen 
have not thought it necessary, in order to correct 
their own habits, to diminish their incomes; and, 
believe me, the way to deal with your drunken 
workman is not to lower his wages, — but to mend 
his wits.* 

And if indeed we do not yet see quite clearly how 

* Compare § 70 of Time and Tide. 



156 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

to deal with the sins of our poor brother, it is 
possible that our dimness of sight may still have 
other causes that can be cast out. There are two 
opposite cries of the great Liberal and Conservative 
parties, which are both most right, and worthy to 
be rallying cries. On their side, '' Let every man 
have his chance;" on yours, ''Let every man 
stand in his place." Yes, indeed, let that be so, 
every man in his place, and every man fit for it. 
See that he holds that place from Heaven's Prov- 
idence ; and not from his family's Providence. 
Let the Lords Spiritual quit themselves of simony, 
we laymen will look after the heretics for them. 
Let the Lords Temporal quit themselves of nepo- 
tism, and we will take care of their authority for 
them. Publish for us, you soldiers, an army 
gazette, in which the one subject of daily intelli- 
gence shall be the grounds of promotion ; a 
gazette which shall simply tell us, what there cer- 
tainly can be no detriment to the service in our 
knownig, when any officer is appointed to a new 
command, — what his former services and successes 
have been, — whom he has superseded, — and on 
what ground. It will be always a satisfaction to 
us ; it may sometimes be an advantage to you : 
and then, when there is really necessary debate 
respecting reduction of wages, let us always begin 
not with the wages of the industrious classes, but 
with those of the idle ones. Let there be hon- 
orary titles, if people like them ; but let there be 
no honorary incomes. 

So much for the master's motto, '' Every man 
in his place." Next for the laborer's motto. 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 



157 



"Every man his chance." Let us mend that for 
them a little, and say, ''Every man his certainty" 
— certainty, that if he does well, he will be honored, 
and aided, and advanced in such degree as may 
be fitting for his faculty and consistent with his 
peace; and equal certainty that if he does ill, he 
will by sure justice be judged, and by sure punish- 
ment be chastised ; if it may be, corrected ; and 
if that may not be, condemned. That is the 
right reading of the Republican motto, "Every 
man his chance." And then, with such a system 
of government, pure, watchful, and just, you may 
approach your great problem of national educa- 
tion, or in other words, of national employment. 
For all education begins in work. What we 
think, or what we know, or what we believe, is in 
the end, of little consequence. The only thing 
of consequence is what we do: and for man, 
woman or child, the first point of education is to 
make them do their best. It is the law of good 
economy to make the best of everything. How 
much more to make the best of every creature ! 
Therefore, when your pauper comes to you and 
asks for bread, ask of him instantly — What faculty 
liave you? What can you do best? Can you 
drive a nail into wood ? Go and mend the parish 
fences. Can you lay a brick? Mend the walls 
of the cottages where the wind comes in. Can 
you lift a spadeful of earth? Turn this field up 
three feet deep all over. Can you only drag a 
weight with your shoulders? Stand at the bottom 
of this hill and help up the overladen horses. 
Can you weld iron and chisel stone ? Fortify this 



158 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

wreck-Strewn coast into a harbor; and change 
these shifting sands into fruitful ground. Wher- 
ever death was, bring life ; that is to be your 
work ; that your parish refuge ; that your educa- 
tion. So and no otherwise can we meet existent 
distress. But for the continual education of the 
whole people, and for their future happiness, they 
must have such consistent employment, as shall 
develop all the powers of the fingers, and the 
limbs, and the brain : and that development is 
only to be obtained by hand-labor, of which you 
have these four great divisions — hand-labor on 
the earth, hand-labor on the sea, hand-labor in 
art, hand-labor in war. Of the last two of these 
I cannot speak to-night, and of the first two only 
with extreme brevity. 

I. Hand-labor on the earth, the work of the 
husbandman and of the shepherd ; — to dress the 
earth and to keep the flocks of it — the first task 
of man, and the final one — the education always 
of noblest lawgivers, kings and teachers ; the ed- 
ucation of Hesiod, of Moses, of David, of all 
the true strength of Rome ; and all its tenderness : 
the pride of Cincinnatus, and the inspiration of 
Virgil. Hand-labor on the earth, and the harvest 
of it brought forth with singing : — not steam-piston 
labor on the earth, and the harvest of it brought 
forth with steam-whistling. You will have no 
prophet's voice accompanied by that shepherd's 
pipe, and pastoral symphony. Do you know that 
lately, in Cumberland, in the chief pastoral dis- 
trict of England, — in Wordsworth's own home, 
— a procession of villagers on their festa day pro- 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 



159 



vided for themselves, by way of music, a steam- 
plow whistling at the head of them ! 

Give me patience while I put the principle of 
machine labor before you, as clearly and in as 
short compass as possible ; it is one that should be 
known at this juncture. Suppose a farming pro- 
prietor needs to employ a hundred men on his 
estate, and that the labor of these hundred men is 
enough, but not more than enough, to till all his 
land, and to raise from it food for his own family, 
and for the hundred laborers. He is obliged 
under such circumstances, to maintain all the men 
in moderate comfort, and can only by economy 
accumulate much for himself But, suppose he 
contrive a machine that will easily do the work of 
fifty men, with only one man to watch it. This 
sounds like a great advance in civilization. The 
farmer of course gets his machine made, turns off 
the fifty men, who may starve or emigrate at their 
choice, and now he can keep half of the produce of 
his estate, which formerly went to feed them, all 
to himself. That is the essential and constant 
operation of machinery among us at this moment. 

Nay, it is at first answered ; no man can in re- 
ality keep half the produce of an estate to him- 
self, nor can he in the end keep more than his 
own human share of anything ; his riches must 
diffuse themselves at some time ; he must maintain 
somebody else with them, however he spends 
them. That is mainly true (not altogether so), 
for food and fuel are in ordinary circumstances 
personally wasted by rich people, in quantities 
which would save many lives. One of my own 



i6o THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

great luxuries, for instance, is candlelight — and I 
probably burn, for myself alone, as many candles 
during the winter, as would comfort the old eyes, 
or spare the young ones, of a whole rushlighted 
country village. Still, it is mainly true that it is 
not by their personal waste that rich people pre- 
vent the lives of the poor. This is the way they 
do it. Let me go back to my farmer. He has 
got his machine made, which goes creaking, 
screaming, and occasionally exploding, about 
modern Arcadia. He has turned off his fifty men 
to starve. Now, at some distance from his own 
farm, there is another on which the laborers were 
working for their bread in the same way, by tilling 
the land. The machinist sends over to these, say- 
ing — ''I have got food enough for you without 
your digging or ploughing any more. I can main- 
tain you in other occupations instead of ploughing 
that land ; if you rake in its gravel you will find 
some hard stones — you shall grind those on mills 
till they glitter; then, my wife shall wear a neck- 
lace of them. Also, if you turn up the meadows 
below you will find some fine white clay, of which 
you shall make a porcelain service for me : and 
the rest of the farm I want for pasture for horses 
for my carriage — and you shall groom them, and 
some of you ride behind the carriage with staves 
in your hands, and I will keep you much fatter for 
doing that than you can keep yourselves by dig- 
ging-" 

Well — but it is answered, are we to have no dia- 
monds, nor china, nor pictures, nor footmen, then 
— but all to be farmers ? I am not saying what 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. i6i 

we ought to do, I want only to show you with per- 
fect clearness first what we are doing ; and that, I 
repeat, is the upshot of machine-contriving in this 
country. And observe its effect on the national 
strength. Without machines, you have a hun- 
dred and fifty yeomen ready to join for defence of 
the land. You get your machine, starve fifty of 
them, make diamond cutters or footmen of as 
many more, and for your national defence against 
an enemy, you have now, and can have, only fifty 
men, instead of a hundred and fifty; these also 
now with minds much alienated from you as their 
chief,* and the rest, lapidaries or footmen ; — and 
a steam plough. 

That is the one effect of machinery; but at 
all events, if we have thus lost in men, we have 
gained in riches ; instead of happy human souls, 
we have at least got pictures, china, horses, and 
are ourselves better off than we were before. But 
very often, and in much of our machine-contriving, 
even that result does not follow. We are not one 
whit the richer for the machine, we only employ 
it for our amusement. For observe, our gaining 
in riches depends on the men who are out of em- 
ployment consenting to be starved, or sent out of 
the country. But suppose they do not consent 
passively to be starved, but some of them become 
criminals, and have to be taken charge of and fed 
at a much greater cost than if they were at work, 
and others, paupers, rioters, and the like, then you 
attain the real outcome of modern wisdom and 

* [They were deserting, I am informed, in the early part of this year, 
1873, at the rate of a regiment a week. J 

II 



1 62 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

ingenuity. You had your hundred men honestly 
at country work; but you don't like the sight of 
human beings in your fields ; you like better to 
see a smoking kettle. You pay, as an amateur, 
for that pleasure, and you employ your fifty men 
in picking oakum, or begging, rioting, and thiev- 
ing. 

By hand-labor, therefore, and that alone, we are 
to till the ground. By hand-labor also to plough 
the sea ; both for food, and in commerce, and in 
war : not with floating kettles there neither, but 
with hempen bridle, and the winds of heaven in 
harness. That is the way the power of Greece 
rose on her Egean, the power of Venice on her 
Adria, of Amalfi in her blue bay, of the Norman 
sea-riders from the North Cape to Sicily: — so, 
your own dominion also of the past. Of the past, 
mind you. On the Baltic and the Nile, your 
power is already departed. By machinery you 
would advance to discovery; by machinery you 
would carry your commerce ; — you would be engi- 
neers instead of sailors ; and instantly in the North 
seas you are beaten among the ice, and before the 
very Gods of Nile, beaten among the sand. Agri- 
culture, then, by the hand or by the plough drawn 
only by animals ; and shepherd and pastoral hus- 
bandry, are to be the chief schools of Englishmen. 
And this most royal academy of all academies you 
have to open over all the land, purifying your 
heaths and hills, and waters, and keeping them full 
of every kind of lovely natural organism, in tree, 
herb, and living creature. All land that is waste 
and ugly, you must redeem into ordered fruitful- 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 163 

ness; all ruin, desolateness, imperfectness of hut 
or habitation, you must do away with ; and through- 
out every village and city of your English domin- 
ion, there must not be a hand that cannot find a 
helper, nor a heart that cannot find a comforter. 

" How impossible !" I know, you are thinking. 
Ah ! So far from impossible, it is easy, it is natural, 
it is necessary, and I declare to you that, sooner or 
later, it 7nust be done, at our peril. If now our 
English lords of land will fix this idea steadily 
before them ; take the people to their hearts, trust 
to their loyalty, lead their labor ; — then indeed 
there will be princes again in the midst of us, 
worthy of the island throne, 

" This royal throne of kings — this sceptred isle — 
This fortress Iniilt by nature for herself 
Against infeciion, and the hand of war; 
This precious stone set in the silver sea; 
This happy breed of men — this little world : 
This other Eden — Demi-Paradise." 

But if they refuse to do this, and hesitate and 
equivocate, clutching through the confused catas- 
trophe of all things only at what they can still keep 
stealthily for themselves, — their doom is nearer 
than even their adversaries hope, and it will be 
deeper than even their despisers dream. 

That, believe me, is the work you have to do in 
England ; and out of England you have room for 
everything else you care to do. Are her domin- 
ions in the world so narrow that she can find no 
place to spin cotton in but Yorkshire ? We may 
organize emigration into an infinite power. We 



1 64 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 

may assemble troops of the more adventurous and 
ambitious of our youth ; we may send them on 
truest foreign service, founding new seats of au- 
thority, and centres of thought, in uncultivated 
and unconquered lands ; retaining the full affec- 
tion to the native country no less in our colonists 
than in our armies, teaching them to maintain 
allegiance to their fatherland in labor no less than 
in battle ; aiding them with free hand in the 
prosecution of discovery, and the victory over 
adverse natural powers ; establishing seats of 
every manufacture in the climates and places best 
fitted for it, and bringing ourselves into due 
alliance and harmony of skill with the dexterities 
of every race, and the wisdoms of every tradition 
and every tongue. 

And then you may make England itself the 
centre of the learning, of the arts, of the cour- 
tesies and felicities of the world. You may cover 
her mountains with pasture ; her plains witH corn, 
her valleys w^ith the lily, and her gardens with the 
rose. You may bring together there in peace the 
wise and the pure, and the gentle of the earth, and 
by their word, command through its farthest 
darkness the birth of '' God's first creature, which 
was Light." You know whose words those are ; 
the words of the wisest of Englishmen. He, and 
with him the wisest of all other great nations, 
have spoken always to men of this hope, and they 
would not hear. Plato, in the dialogue of Critias, 
his last, broken off at his death, — Pindar, in 
passionate singing of the fortunate islands, — 
Virgil, in the prophetic tenth eclogue, — Bacon, in 



THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND. 165 

his fable of the New Atlantis, — More, in the book 
which, too impatiently wise, became the bye-word 
of fools — these, all, have told us with one voice 
what we should strive to attain ; they not hopeless 
of it, but for our follies forced, as it seems, by 
heaven, to tell us only partly and in parables, lest 
we should hear them and obey. 

Shall we never listen to the words of these 
wisest of men ? Then listen at least to the words 
of your children — let us in the lips of babes and 
sucklings find our strength ; and see that we do 
not make them mock instead of pray, when we 
teach them, night and morning, to ask for what 
we believe never can be granted ; — that the will 
of the Father, — which is, that His creatures may 
be righteous and happy, — should be done, on 
earth, as it is in Heaven. 



FOLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 167 



APPENDIX. 

NOTES ON THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 

I AM often accused of inconsistency ; but be- 
lieve myself defensible against the charge with 
respect to what I have said on nearly every sub- 
ject except that of war. It is impossible for me 
to write consistently of war, for the groups of 
facts I have gathered about it lead me to two 
precisely opposite conclusions. 

When I find this the case, in other matters, I 
am silent, till I can choose my conclusion : but, 
with respect to war, I am forced to speak, by the 
necessities of time ; and forced to act, one way 
or another. The conviction on which I act is, 
that it causes an incalculable amount of avoidable 
human suffering, and that it ought to cease among 
Christian nations ; and if therefore any of my 
boy-friends desire to be soldiers, I try my utmost 
to bring them into what I conceive to be a better 
mind. But, on the other hand, I know certainly 
that the most beautiful characters yet developed 
among men have been formed in war ; — that all 
great nations have been warrior nations, and that 
the only kinds of peace which we are likely to 
get in the present age are ruinous alike to the in- 
tellect, and the heart. 

The third lecture, in this volume, addressed to 



1 68 APPENDIX. 

young soldiers, had for its object to strengthen 
their trust in the virtue of their profession. It is 
inconsistent with itself, in its closing appeal to 
women, praying them to use their influence to 
bring wars to an end. And I have been hindered 
from completing my long intended notes on the 
economy of the Kings of Prussia by continually 
increasing doubt how far the machinery and dis- 
cipline of war, under which they learned the art 
of government, was essential for such lesson ; and 
what the honesty and sagacity of the Friedrich 
who so nobly repaired his ruined Prussia, might 
have done for the happiness of his Prussia, un- 
ruined. 

In war, however, or in peace, the character 
which Carlyle chiefly loves him for, and in which 
Carlyle has shown him to differ from all kings up 
to this time succeeding him, is his constant pur- 
pose to use every power intrusted to him for the 
good of his people ; and be, not in name only, 
but in heart and hand, their king. 

Not in ambition, but in natural instinct of 
duty. Friedrich, born to govern, determines to 
govern tothe best of his faculty. That *'best" 
may sometimes be unwise ; and self-will, or love 
of glory, may have their oblique hold on his 
mind, and warp it this way or that ; but they are 
never principal with him. He believes that war 
is necessary, and maintains it ; sees that peace is 
necessary, and calmly persists in the work of it 
to the day of his death, not claiming therein 
more praise than the head of any ordinary house- 
hold, who rules it simply because it is his place, 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 169 

and he must not yield the mastery of it to 
another. 

How far, in the future, it may be possible for 
men to gain the strength necessary for kingship 
without either fronting death, or inflicting it, 
seems to me not at present determinable. The 
historical facts are that, broadly speaking, none but 
soldiers, or persons with a soldierly faculty, have 
ever yet shown themselves fit to be kings ; and 
that no other men are so gentle, so just, or so 
clear-sighted. Wordsworth's character of the 
happy warrior cannot be reached in the height of 
it but by a warrior ; nay, so much is it beyond 
common strength that I had supposed the entire 
meaning of it to be metaphorical, until one of 
the best soldiers of England himself read me the 
poem, and taught me, what I might have known, 
had I enough watched his own life, that it was 
entirely literal. There is nothing of so high 
reach distinctly demonstrable in Friedrich : but 
I see more and more, as I grow older, that the 
things which are the most worth, encumbered 
among the errors and faults of every mans's 
nature, are never clearly demonstrable ; and are 
often most forcible when they are scarcely distinct 
to his own conscience, — how much less, clam- 
orous for recognition by others ! 

Nothing can be more beautiful than Carlyle's 
showing of this, to any careful reader of Fried- 
rich. But careful readers are but one in a thou- 
sand ; and by the careless, the masses of detail 
with which the historian must deal are insur- 
mountable. 



I70 APPENDIX. 

My own notes, made for the special purpose of 
hunting down the one point of economy, though 
they cruelly spoil Carlyle's own current and 
method of thought, may yet be useful in enabling 
readers, unaccustomed to books involving so vast 
a range of conception, to discern what, on this 
one subject only, may be gathered from that his- 
tory. On any other subject of importance, simi- 
lar gatherings might be made of other passages. 
The historian has to deal with all at once. 

I therefore have determined to print here, as a 
sequel to the Essay on War, my notes from the 
first volume of Friedrich, on the economies of 
Brandenburg, up to the date of the establishment 
of the Prussian monarchy. The economies of 
the first three Kings of Prussia I shall then take 
up in Fors Clavigera, finding them fitter for ex- 
amination in connection with the subject of that 
book than of this. 

I assume, that the reader will take down his 
first volume of Carlyle, and read attentively the 
passages to which I refer him. I give the ref- 
erence first to tlie largest edition, in six volumes 
(1858-1865); then, in parenthesis, to the smallest 
or " people's edition " (1872-1873). The pieces 
which I have quoted in my own text are for the 
use of readers who may not have ready access to 
the book ; and are enough for the explanation of 
the points to which I wish them to direct their 
thoughts in reading such histories of soldiers or 
soldier-kingdoms. 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 171 
I. 

Year 928 /^ 936. — Dawn of Order in Christian 

GeriJiany. 

Book II. Chap. i. p. 67 (47). 

Henry the Fowler, " the beginning of Ger- 
man kings," is a mighty soldier in the cause of 
peace ; his essential work the building and organi- 
zation of fortified towns for the protection of 
men. 

Read page 72 with utmost care (51), '' He forti- 
fied towns," to end of small print. I have added 
some notes on the matter in my lecture on Gio- 
vanni Pisano ; but whether you can glance at 
them or not, fix in your mind this institution of 
truly civil or civic building in Germany, as dis- 
tinct from the building of baronial castles for the 
security oi robbers : and of a standing army consist- 
ing of every ninth man, called a ''burgher" 
(" townsman ") — a soldier, appointed to learn that 
profession that he may guard the walls — the exact 
reverse of our notion of a burgher. 

Frederick's final idea of his army is, indeed, 
only this. 

Brannibor, a chief fortress of the Wends, is thus 
taken, and further strengthened by Henry the 
Fowler ; wardens appointed for it; and thus the 
history of Brandenburg begins. On all frontiers, 
also, this *' beginning of German kings" has his 
*'Markgraf," "Ancient of the marked place." 
Read page 73, measuredly, learning it by heart, 
if it may be. (51-2.) 



172 APPENDIX. 

II. 
936 — 1000. — History of Nascent Brandenburg. 

The passage I last desired you to read ends with 
this sentence : '^ The sea-wall you build, and what 
main floodgates you establish in it, will depend 
on the state of the outer sea." 

From this time forward you have to keep 
clearly separate in your minds, (a) the history of 
that outer sea, Pagan Scandinavia, Russia, and 
Bor-Russia, or Prussia proper ; (b) the history 
of Henry the Fowler's Eastern and Western 
Marches ; asserting themselves gradually as Aus- 
tria and the Netherlands ; and (c) the history of 
this inconsiderable fortress of Brandenburg, grad- 
ually becoming considerable, and the capital city 
of increasing district between them. That last 
history, hov/ever, Carlyle is obliged to leave vague 
and gray for two hundred years after Henry's 
death. Absolutely dim for the first century, in 
which nothing is evident but that its wardens or 
Markgraves had no peaceable possession of the 
place. Read the second paragraph m page 74 
(52-3), *' in old books " to "reader," and the first 
in page ^2> (59)> " meanwhile " to " substantial," 
consecutively. They bring the story of Branden- 
burg itself down, at any rate, from 936 to 1000. 

III. 

936 — 1000. — State of the Outer Sea. 

Read now Chapter II. beginning at page 76 
(54), wherein you will get account of the begin- 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 



173 



ning of vigorous missionary work on the outer 
sea, in Prussia proper ; of the death of St. Adal- 
bert, and of the purchase of his dead body by the 
Duke of Poland. 

You will not easily understand Carlyle's laugh 
in this chapter, unless you have learned yourself 
to laugh in sadness, and to laugh in love. 

*' No Czech blows his pipe in the woodlands 
without certain precautions and preliminary 
fuglings of a devotional nature." (Imagine St. 
Adalbert, in spirit, at the railway station in Bir- 
mingham !) 

My own main point for notice in the chapter is 
the purchase of his body for its " weight in gold." 
Swindling angels held it up in the scales ; it did 
not weigh so much as a web of gossamer. '* Had 
such excellent odor, too, and came for a mere 
nothing of gold," says Carlyle. It is one of the 
first commercial transactions of Germany, but I 
regret the conduct of the angels on the occasion. 
Evangelicalism has been proud of ceasing to in- 
vest in relics, its swindling angels helping it to 
better things, as it supposes. For my own part, I 
believe Christian Germany could not have bought 
at this time any treasure more precious ; neverthe- 
less, the missionary work itself you find is wholly 
vain. The difference of opinion between St. 
Adalbert and the Wends, on Divine matters, does 
not signify to the Fates. They will not have it 
disputed about ; and end the dispute adversely to 
St. Adalbert, — adversely, even, to Brandenburg 
and its civilizing power, as you will immediately 
see. 



174 APPENDIX. 

IV. 

1000 — 1030. — History of Brandenburg in 
Trouble. 

Book II. Chap. iii. p. 83 (59). 

The adventures of Brandenburg in contest with 
Pagan Prussia, irritated, rather than amended, by 
St. Adalbert. In 1023, roughly, a hundred years 
after Henry the Fowler's death, Brandenburg is 
taken by the Wends, and its first line of Mark- 
graves ended ; its population mostly butchered, 
especially the priests ; and the Wends' God, 
Triglaph, "something like three whales' cubs 
combined by boiling," set up on the top of St. 
Mary's Hill. 

Here is an adverse " Doctrine of the Trinity " 
which has its supporters ! It is wonderful, — this 
Tripod and Triglyph, — three-footed, three-cut 
faith of the North and South, the leaf of the 
oxalis, and strawberry, and clover, fostering the 
same in their simple manner. I suppose it to be 
the most savage and natural of notions about 
Deity ; a prismatic idol-shape of Him, rude as a 
triangular log, as a trefoil grass. I do not find 
how long Triglaph held his state on St. Mary's 
Hill. " For a time," says Carlyle, ''the priests 
all slain or fled, — shadowy Markgraves the like — 
church and state lay in ashes, and Triglaph, like 
a triple porpoise under the influence of laudanum, 
stood, I know not whether on his head or his tail, 
aloft on the Harlungsberg, as the Supreme of this 
Universe for the time being." 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 175 

V. 

1030 — 1 1 30. — Brandenburg under the Ditmarsch 
Markgraves, or Ditmarsch-Siade Markgraves. 

Book II. Chap. iii. p. 85 (60). 

Of Anglish, or Saxon breed. They attnck 
Brandenburg, under its Triglyphic protector, take 
it — dethrone him, and hold the town for a hun- 
dred years, their history ^'stamped beneficially on 
the face of things, Markgraf after Markgraf get- 
ting killed in the business. * Erschlagen,' ' slain,* 
fighting with the Heathen — say the old books, and 
pass on to another." If we allow seven years to 
Triglaph — we get a clear century for these — as 
above indicated. They die out in 1130. 

VI. 

1 1 30 — 1 1 70. — Brandenburg under Albert the 
Bear. 

Book II. Chap, iv. p. 91 (64). 

He is the first of the Ascanien Markgraves, 
whose castle of Ascanica is on the northern slope 
of the Hartz Mountains, ''ruins still dimly trace- 
able." 

There had been no soldier or king of note 
among the Ditmarsch Markgraves, so that you will 
do well to fix in your mind successively the three 
men, Henry the Fowler, St. Adalbert, and Albert 
the Bear. A soldier again, and a strong one. 
Named the Bear only from the device on his 



176 APPENDIX. 

shield, first wholly definite Markgraf of Branden- 
burg that there is, "and that the luckiest of 
events for Brandenburg." Read page 93 {pd) 
carefully, and note this of his economies. 

*' Nothing better is known to me of Albert the 
Bear than his introducing large numbers of Dutch 
Netherlanders into those countries ; men thrown 
out of work, who already knew how to deal with 
bog and sand, by mixing and delving, and who 
first taught Brandenburg what greenness and cow- 
pasture was. The Wends, in presence of such 
things, could not but consent more and more to 
efface themselves — either to become German, and 
grow milk and cheese in the Dutch manner, or to 
disappear from the world. 

''After two hundred and fifty years of barking 
and worrying, the Wends are now finally reduced 
to silence ; their anarchy well buried and whole- 
some Dutch cabbage planted over it ; Albert did 
several great things in the world ; but this, for 
posterity, remains his memorable feat. Not done 
quite easily, but done : big destinies of nations 
or of persons are not founded gratis in this world. 
He had a sore, toilsome time of it, coercing, 
warring, managing among his fellow-creatures, 
while his day's work lasted — fifty years or so, for 
it began early. He died in his Castle of Ballen- 
stadt, peaceably among the Hartz Mountains at 
last, in the year 11 70, age about sixty-five." 

Now, note in all this the steady gain of soldiership 
enforcing order and agriculture, with St. Adalbert 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 



177 



giving higher strain to the imagination. Henry 
the Fowler establishes walled towns, fighting for 
mere peace. Albert the Bear plants the country 
with cabbages, fighting for his cabbage-fields. 
And the disciples of St. Adalbert, generally, have 
succeeded in substituting some idea of Christ for 
the idea of Triglaph. Some idea only ; other 
ideas than of Christ haunt even to this day those 
Hartz Mountains among which Albert the Bear 
died so peacefully. Mephistopheles, and all his 
ministers, inhabit there, commanding mephitic 
clouds and earth-born dreamr 

VII. 

1 1 70 — 1320. — Brandenburg 150 years under the 
Ascanien Markgraves. 

Vol. I. Book II. Chap. viii. p. 135 (96). 

** Wholesome Dutch cabbages continued to be 
more and more planted by them in the waste 
sand : intrusive chaos, and Triglaph held at bay 
by them," till at last in 1240, seventy years after 
the great Bear's death, they fortify a new Burg, a 
^^ little rampart," Wehrlin, diminutive of Wehr 
(or vallum), gradually smoothing itself, with a 
little echo of the Bear in it too, into Ber-lin, the 
oily river Spree flowing by, " in which you catch 
various fish;" while trade over the flats and by 
the dull streams, is widely possible. Of the 
Ascanien race, the notablest is Otto with the 
Arrow, whose story see, pp. 138-141 (98-109), 
noting that Otto is one of the first Minnesingers; 



178 



APPENDIX. 



that, being a prisoner to the Archbishop of 
Magdeburg, his wife rescues him, selling her jewels 
to bribe the canons ; and that the Knight, set free 
on parole and promise of further ransom, rides 
back with his own price in his hand ; holding 
himself thereat cheaply bought, though no angelic 
legerdemain happens to the scales now. His own 
estimate of his price — '' Rain gold ducats on my 
war-horse and me, till you cannot see the point of 
my spear atop." 

Emptiness of utter pride, you think? 

Not so. Consider with yourself, reader, how 
much you dare to say, aloud, you are worth. If 
you have «^ courage to name any price whatsoever 
for yourself, believe me, the cause is not your 
modesty, but that in very truth you feel in your 
heart there would be no bid for you at Lucian's 
sale of lives, were that again possible, at Christie 
and Manson's. 

Finally (1319 exactly ; say 1320, for memory), 
the Ascanien line expired in Brandenburg, and 
the little town and its electorate lapsed to the 
Kaiser : meantime other economical arrangements 
had been in progress ; but observe first how far we 
have got. 

The Fowler, St. Adalbert, and the Bear have 
established order, and some sort of Christianity; 
but the established persons begin to think some- 
what too well of themselves. On quite honest 
terms, a dead saint or a living knight ought to be 
worth their true *' weight in gold." But a pyra- 
mid, with only the point of the spear seen at top, 
would be many times over one's weight in gold. 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 



179 



And although men were yet far enough from the 
notion of modern days, that the gold is better 
than the flesh, and from buying it with the clay 
of one's body, and even the fire of one's soul, in- 
stead of soul and body with //, they were be- 
ginning to fight for their own supremacy, or for 
their own religious fancies, and not at all to any 
useful end, until an entirely unexpected move- 
ment is made in the old useful direction forsooth, 
only by some kind ship-captains of Liibeck ! 

VIII. 

1 2 10 — 1320. — Civil work, aiding itiilitary, during 
the Asca7iien period. 

Vol. I. Book II. Chap, vi. p. 109 (77), 

In the year 1190, Acre not yet taken, and the 
crusading army wasting by murrain on the shore, 
the German soldiers especially having none to 
look after them, certain compassionate ship-cap- 
tains of Liibeck, one Walpot von Bassenheim 
taking the lead, formed themselves into an union 
for succor of the sick and the dying, set up canvas 
tents from the Liibeck ship stores, and did what 
utmost was in them silently in the name of mercy 
and heaven. Finding its work prosper, the little 
medicinal and weather-fending company took 
vows on itself, strict chivalry forms, and decided 
to become permanent *' Knights Hospitallers of 
our dear Lady of Mount Zion," separate from 
the former Knights Hospitallers, as being entirely 
German : yet soon, as the German Order of St. 



l8o APPENDIX. 

Mary, eclipsing in importance Templars, Hospi- 
tallers, and every other chivalric order then ex- 
tant ; no purpose of battle in them, but much 
strength for it ; their purpose only the helping of 
German pilgrims. To this only they are bound 
by their vow, '' geliibde," and become one of the 
useftillest of clubs in all the Pall Mall of Europe. 

Finding pilgrimage in Palestine falling slack, 
and more need for them on the homeward side of 
the sea, their Horhmeister, Hermann of the 
Salza, goes over to Venice in 1210. There, the 
titular bishop of still unconverted Preussen ad- 
vises him of that field of work for his idle knights. 
Hermann thinks well of it : sets his St. Mary's 
riders at Triglaph, with the sword in one hand 
and a missal in the other. 

Not your modern way of effecting conversion ! 
Too illiberal, vou think ; and what would Mr. J. 
S. Mill say ? 

But if Triglaph //^^been verily ''three whales' 
cubs combined by boiling," you would yourself 
have promoted attack on him for the sake of his 
oil, would not you? The Teutsch Ritters, fight- 
ing him for charity, are they so much inferior to 
you? 

''They built, and burnt, innumerable stockades 
for and against ; built wooden forts which are 
now stone towns. They fought much and preva- 
lently ; galloped desperately two and fro, ever on 
the alert. In peaceabler ulterior times, they 
fenced in the Nogat and the Weichsel with dams, 
whereby unlimited quagmire might become grassy 



POLITICAL E CO NO MY OF PR USSIA. 1 8 1 

iqeadow — as it continues to this day. Marien- 
burg (Mary's Burg), with its grand stone Schloss 
still visible and even habitable : this was at length 
their headquarter. But how many Burgs of 
wood and stone they built, in different parts; 
what revolts, surprisals, furious fights in woody, 
boggy places they had, no man has counted. 

"■ But always some preaching by zealous monks, 
accompanied the chivalrous fighting. And colo- 
nists came in from Germany; trickling in, or at 
times streaming. Victorious Ritterdom offers 
terms to the beaten heathen : terms not of toler- 
ant nature, but which will be punctually kept by 
Ritterdom. When the flame of revolt or general 
conspiracy burnt up again too extensively, high 
personages came on crusade to them. Ottocar, 
King of Bohemia, with his extensive far-shining 
chivalry, ' conquered Samland in a month ; * tore 
up the Romova where Adalbert had been massa- 
cred, and burnt it from the face of the earth. A 
certain fortress was founded at that time, in Otto- 
car's presence ; and in honor of him they named 
it King's Fortress, 'Konigsberg.' Among King 
Ottocar's esquires, or subaltern junior officials, on 
this occasion, is one Rudolf, heir of a poor Swiss 
lordship and gray hill castle, called Hapsburg, 
rather in reduced circumstances, whom Ottocar 
likes for his prudent, hardy ways ; a stout, mod- 
est, wise young man, who may chance to redeem 
Hapsburg a little, if he lives. 

*' Conversion, and complete conquest once 
come, there was a happy time for Prussia; 
ploughshare instead of sword; busy sea-havens. 



1 82 APPENDIX. 

German towns, getting built ; churches every- 
where rising ; grass growing, and peaceable 
cows, where formerly had been quagmire and 
snakes, and for the Order a happy time. On the 
whole, this Teutsch Ritterdom, for the first cen- 
tury and more, was a grand phenomenon, and flamed 
like a bright blessed beacon through the night of 
things, in those Northern countries. For above a 
century, we perceive, it was the rallying place of 
all brave men who had a career to seek on terms 
other than vulgar. The noble soul, aiming be- 
yond. money, and sensible to more than hunger in 
this world, had a beacon burning (as we say), if 
the night chanced to overtake it, and the earth to 
grow too intricate, as is not uncommon. Better 
than the career of stump-oratory, I should fancy, 
and its Hesperides apples, golden, and of gilt 
horse-dung. Better than puddling away one's 
poor spiritual gift of God (loan, not gift), such as 
it may be, in buiMing the lofty rhyme, the lofty 
review article, for a discerning public that has six- 
pence to spare ! Times alter greatly."* 

We must pause here again for a moment to 
think where we are, and who is with us. The 
Teutsch Ritters have been fighting, indepen- 
dently of all states, for their own hand, or St. 
Adalbert's ; — partly for mere love of fight, partly 
for love of order, partly for love of God. Mean- 
time, other Riders have been fighting wholly for 
what they could get by it ; and other persons, not 

* I would much rather print these passages of Carlyle in large golden 
letters than small black ones ; but they are only here at all for unlucky 
people who can't read them with the context. 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 183 

Riders, have not been fighting at all, but in their 
own towns peacefully manufacturing and selling. 

Of Henry the Fowler's Marches, Austria has 
become a military power, Flanders a mercantile 
one, pious only in the degree consistent with their 
several occupations. Prussia is now a practical 
and farming country, more Christian than its 
longer-converted neighbors. 

*' Towns are built, Konigsberg (King Ottocar's 
town), Thoren (Thorn, City of the Gates), with 
many others ; so that the wild population and the 
tame now lived tolerably together, under Gospel 
and Liibeck law ; and all was ploughing and trad- 

But Brandenburg itself, what of it ? 

The Ascanien Markgraves rule it on the whole 
prosperously down to 1320, when their line ex- 
pires, and it falls into the power of Imperial Aus- 
tria. 

IX. 

1320 — 1 41 5. — Brandenburg under the Austrians. 

A CENTURY — the fourteenth — of miserable an- 
archy and decline for Brandenburg, its Kurfiirsts, 
in deadly succession, making what they can out 
of it for their own pockets. The city itself and 
its territory utterly helpless. Read pp. 180, 181 
(129, 130). ''The towns suffered much, any 
trade they might have had going to wreck. Rob- 
ber castles flourished, all else decayed, no high- 
way safe. What are Hamburg pedlers made for 
but to be robbed?'* 



1 84 APPENDIX. 

X. 

1 41 5 — 1440. — Brande7iburg under Friedrich of 
Nuremberg. 

This is the fourth of the men whom you are to 
remember as creators of the Prussian monarchy, 
Henry the Fowler, St. Adalbert, Albert the Bear, 
of Ascanien, and Friedrich of Nuremberg ; (of 
HohenzoUern by name, and by country of the 
Black Forest, north of the Lake of Constance). 

Brandenburg is sold to him at Constance, dur- 
ing the great Council, for about ^200,000 of our 
money, worth perhaps a million in that day ; still, 
with its capabilities, "dog cheap." Admitting, 
what no one at the time denied, the general mar- 
ketableness of states as private property, this is 
the one practical result, thinks Carlyle (not likely 
to think wrong), of that oecumenical deliberation, 
four years long, of the " elixir of the intellect and 
dignity of Europe. And that one thing was not 
its doing: but a pawnbroking job, intercalated," 
putting, however, at last, Brandenburg again 
under the will of one strong man. On St. John's 
Day, 141 2, he first set foot in his town, "and 
Brandenburg, under its wise Kurflirst, begins to 
be cosmic again." The story of Heavy Peg, 
pages 195-198 (138, 140), is one of the most bril- 
liant and important passages of the first volume ; 
page 199, specially to our purpose, must be given 
entire : — 

"The offer to be Kaiser was made him in his 
old days ; but he wisely declined that too. It was 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 185 

in Brandenburg, by what he silently founded 
there, that he did his chief benefit to Germany 
and mankind. He understood the noble art of 
governing men ; had in him the justness, clearness, 
valor, and patience needed for that. A man of 
sterling probity, for one thing. Which indeed is 
the first requisite in said art : — if you will have 
your laws obeyed without mutiny, see well that 
they be pieces of God Almighty's law; otherwise 
all the artillery in the world will not keep down 
mutiny. 

" Friedrich ^travelled much over Branden- 
burg ; ' looking into everything with his own eyes; 
making, I can well fancy, innumerable crooked 
things straight ; reducing more and more that 
famishing dog-kennel of a Brandenburg into a 
fruitful arable field. His portraits represent a 
square-headed, mild-looking, solid gentleman, 
with a certain twinkle of mirth in the serious 
eyes of him. Except in those Hussite wars for 
Kaiser Sigismund and the Reich, in which no 
man could prosper, he may be defined as con- 
stantly prosperous. To Brandenburg he was, very 
literally, the blessing of blessings ; redemption 
out of death into life. In the ruins of that old 
Friesack Castle, battered down by Heavy Peg, 
antiquarian science (if it had any eyes) might 
look for the tap-root of the Prussian nation, and 
the beginning of all that Brandenburg has since 
grown to under the sun." 

Which growth is now traced by Carlyle in its 
various budding and withering, under the succes- 



i86 



APPENDIX. 



sion of the twelve Electors, of whom Friedrich, 
with his Heavy Peg, is first, and Friedrich, first 
King of Prussia, grandfather of Friedrich the 
Great, the twelfth. 



XL 



1 41 5 — 1 701. — Brandenburg under the Hohenzol- 



ler7i Kurfiirsis. 



Book III. 



Who the Hohenzollerns were, and how they 
came to power in Nuremberg, is told in Chap. v. 
of Book II. 

Their succession in Brandenburg is given in 
brief at page 377 (269). I copy it, in absolute 
barrenness of enumeration, for our momentary 
convenience, here : — 



Friedrich I. of Brandenburg (6th of 

Nuremberg) .... 141 2-1440 

Friedrich II., called ''Iron Teeth" 1440- 147 2 

Albert 1472-1486 

Johann ..... i486- 1499 

Joachim I 1499-1535 

Joachim II i535-i57i 

Johann George .... 1571-1598 

Joachim Friedrich . . . 1598- 1608 

Johann Sigismund . . . 1608-16 19 

George Wilhelm . . . 1619-1640 

Friedrich Wilhelm (the Great Elector) 1640-1688 
Friedrich, first King ; crowned Jan. 18 1 701 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 187 

Of this line of princes we have to say they 
followed generally in their ancestor's steps, and 
had success of the like kind more or less; Hohen- 
zollerns all of them, by character and behavior 
as well as by descent. No lack of quiet energy, 
of thrift, sound sense. There was likewise solid 
fair-play in general, no founding of yourself on 
ground that will not carry, and there was instant j 
gentle, but inexorable C7'ushing of ifiiitiny, if it 
showed itself, which, after the Second Elector, or 
at most the Third, it had altogether ceased to do. 

This is the general account of them ; of spe- 
cial matters note the following : — 

II. Friedrich, called "Iron-teeth," from his 
firmness, proves a notable manager and governor. 
Builds the palace at Berlin in its first form, and 
makes it his chief residence. Buys Neumark from 
the fallen Teutsch Ritters, and generally estab- 
lishes things on securer footing. 

III. Albert, " a fiery, tough old Gentleman," 
called the Achilles of Germany in his day; has 
half-a-century of fighting with his own Niirem- 
bergers, with Bavaria, France, Burgundy and its 
fiery Charles, besides being head constable to the 
Kaiser among any disorderly persons in the East. 
His skull, long shown on his tomb, " marvellous 
for strength and with no visible sutures." 

IV. John, the orator of his race ; (but the ora- 
tions unrecorded). His second son, Archbishop 
of Maintz, for whose piece of memorable work 
j^<? /rt:^(f 223 (143), and read in connection with 
that the history of Markgraf George, pp. 237-241 
152-154), and the 8th chapter of the third book. 



1 88 APPENDIX. 

V. Joachim I,, of little note ; thinks there has 
been enough Reformation, and checks proceedings 
in a dull stubbornness, causing him at least grave 
domestic difficulties. — Page 271 (173). 

VI. Joachim II. Again active in the Reforma- 
tion, and staunch, 

''though generally in a cautious, weighty, never 
in a rash, swift way, to the great cause of Protes- 
tantism and to all good causes. He was himself a 
solemnly devout man ; deep, awe-stricken rever- 
ence dwelling in his view of this universe. Most 
serious, though with a jocose dialect, commonly 
having a cheerful wit in speaking to men. Luther's 
books he called his Seelenschatz (soul's treasure) ; 
Luther and the Bible were his chief reading. 
Fond of profane learning, too, and of the useful 
or ornamental arts; given to music, and 'would 
himself sing aloud ' when he had a melodious 
leisure hour." 

VII. Johann George, a prudent thrifty Herr ; no 
mistresses, no luxuries allowed ; at the sight of a 
new-fashioned coat he would fly out on an unhappy 
youth and pack him from his presence. Very strict 
in point of justice ; a peasant once appealing to- 
him in one of his inspection journeys through the 
country — 

'' ' Grant me justice, Durchlaucht, against so 
and so ; lam your Highness's born subject.' — • 
' Thou shouldst have it, man, wert thou a born 
Turk ! ' answered Johann George." 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 189 

Thus, generally, we find this line of Electors 
representing in Europe the Puritan mind of Eng- 
land in a somewhat duller, but less dangerous, 
form ; receiving what Protestantism could teach of 
honesty and common sense, but not its anti-Cath- 
olic fury, or its selfish spiritual anxiety. Pardon 
of sins is not to be had from Tetzel ; neither, the 
Hohenzollern mind advises with itself, from even 
Tetzel's master, for either the buying, or the asking. 
On the whole, we had better commit as few as pos- 
sible, and live just lives and plain ones. 

'' A conspicuous thrift, veracity, modest solidity, 
looks through the conduct of this Herr ; a deter- 
mined Protestant he too, as indeed all the follow- 
ing were and are." 

VIII. Joachim Friedrich. Gets hold of Prussia, 
which hitherto, you observe, has always been 
spoken of as a separate country from Brandenburg. 
March 11, 1605 — "Squeezed his way into the 
actual guardianship of Preussen and its imbecile 
Duke, which was his by right." 

For my own part, I do not trouble myself much 
about these rights, never being able to make out 
any single one, to begin with, except the right to 
keep everything and every place about you in as 
good order as you can — Prussia, Poland, or what 
else. I should much like, for instance, just now, 
to hear of any honest Cornish gentleman of the 
old Drake breed taking a fancy to land in Spain, 
and trying what he could make of his rights as 
far round Gibraltar as he could enforce them. At 



icio APPENDIX 

all events, Master Joachim has somehow got hold 
of Prussia ; and means to keep it. 

IX. Johann Sigismund. Only notable for our 
economical purposes, as getting the *' guardian- 
ship " of Prussia confirmed to him. The story at 
page 317 (226), *'a strong flame of choler," indi- 
cates a new order of things among the knights 
of Europe — '^ princely etiquettes melting all into 
smoke." Too literally so, that being one of the 
calamitous functions of the plain lives we are liv- 
ing, and of the busy life our country is living. In 
the Duchy of Cleve, especially, concerning which 
legal dispute begins in Sigismund's time. And it 
is well worth the lawyers' trouble, it seems. 

*'It amounted, perhaps, to two Yorkshires in 
extent. A naturally opulent country of fertile 
meadows, shipping capabilities, metalliferous hills, 
and at this time, in consequence of the Dutch- 
Spanish war, and the multitude of Protestant refu- 
gees, it was getting filled with ingenious industries, 
and rising to be what it still is, the busiest quarter 
of Germany. A country lowing with kine ; the 
hum of the flax-spindle heard in its cottages in 
those old days — ' much of the linen called Hol- 
lands is made in Jlilich, and only bleached, 
stamped, and sold by the Dutch,' says Biisching. 
A country in our days which is shrouded at short 
intervals with the due canopy of coal-smoke, and 
loud with sounds of the anvil and the loom." 

The lawyers took two hundred and six years to 
settle the question concerning this Duchy, and the 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 191 

thing Johann Sigismund had claimed legally in 
1609 was actually handed over to Johann Sigis- 
mund's descendant in the seventh generation. 
*' These litigated duchies are now the Prussian 
provinces, Jiilich, Berg, Cleve, and the nucleus of 
Prussia's possessions in the Rhine country." 

X. George Wilhelm. Read pp. 325 to 327 
(231, 2i2iZ) on this Elector and German Protestant- 
ism, now fallen cold, and somewhat too little 
dangerous. But George Wilhelm is the only 
weak prince of all the twelve. For another ex- 
ample how the heart and life of a country depend 
upon its prince, not on its council, read this, of 
Gustavus Adolphus, demanding the cession of 
Spandau and Kustrin : 

*' Which cession Kurfiirst George Wilhelm, 
though giving all his prayers to the good cause, 
could by no means grant. Gustav had to insist, 
with more and more emphasis, advancing at last 
with military menace upon Berlin itself. He was 
met by George Wilhelm and his Council, * in the 
woods of Copenick,' short way to the east of that 
city ; there George Wilhelm and his Council 
wandered about, sending messages, hopelessly 
consulting, saying among each other^ ' Que faire ? 
lis ont des canons.* For many hours so, round 
the inflexible Gustav, who was there like a fixed 
milestone, and to all questions and comers had 
only one answer." 

On our special question of war and its conse- 
quences, read this of the Thirty Years' one : 



192 



APPENDIX. 



''But on the whole, the grand weapon .in it, 
and towards the latter times the exclusive one, was 
hunger. The opposing armies tried to starve one 
another; at lowest, tried each not to starve. Each 
trying to eat the country or, at any rate, to leave 
nothing eatable in it ; what that will mean for the 
country we may consider. As the armies too fre- 
quently, and the Kaiser's armies habitually, lived 
without commissariat, often enough without pay, 
all horrors of war and of being a seat of war, that 
have been since heard of, are poor to those then 
practised, the detail of which is still horrible to 
read. Germany, in all eatable quarters of it, had 
to undergo the process ; tortured, torn to pieces, 
wrecked, and brayed as in mortar, under the iron 
mace of war. Brandenburg saw its towns seized 
and sacked, its country populations driven to 
despair by the one party and the other. Three 
times — first in the Wallenstein-Mecklenburg 
times, while fire and sword were the weapons, and 
again, twice over, in the ultimate stages of tlie 
struggle, when starvation had become the method 
— Brandenburg fell to be the principal theatre of 
conflict, where all forms of the dismal were at 
their height. In 1638, three years after that 
precious ' Peace of Prag,' . . . the ravages of 
the starving Gallas and his Imperialists excelled 
all precedent, . . . men ate human flesh, nay, 
human creatures ate their own children.' 'Que 
faire ? lis ont des canons ! ' " 

" We have now arrived at the lowest nadir 
point " (says Carlyle) " of the history of Branden- 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 



193 



burg under the HohenzoUerns. " Is this then all 
that Heavy Peg and our nine Kiirfursts have done 
for us ? 

Carlyle does not mean that : but even he, 
greatest of historians since Tacitus, is not enough 
careful to mark for us the growth of national 
character, as distinct from the prosperity of dy- 
nasties. 

A republican historian would think of this de- 
velopment only, and suppose it to be possible 
without any dynasties. 

Which is indeed in a measure so, and the work 
now chiefly needed in moral philosophy, as well as 
history, is an analysis of the constant and preva- 
lent, yet unthought of, influences, which, without 
any external help from kings, and in a silent and 
entirely necessary manner, form, in Sweden, in 
Bavaria, in the Tyrol, in the Scottish border, and 
on the French seacoast, races of noble peasants ; 
pacific, poetic, heroic, Christian-hearted in the 
deepest sense, who may indeed perish by sword 
or famine in any cruel thirty years' war, or igno- 
ble thirty years' peace, and yet leave such strength 
to their children that the country, apparently 
ravaged into hopeless ruin, revives, under any pru- 
dent king, as tlie cultivated fields do under tlie 
spring rain. How the rock to which no seed can 
cling, and which no rain can soften, is subdued 
into the good ground which can bring forth its 
hundredfold, w^e forget to watch, while we follow, 
the footsteps of the sower, or mourn the catas- 
trophes of storm. All this while, the Prussian 
earth, — the Prussian soul, — has been thus dealt 

13 



194 APPENDIX. 

upon by successive fate ; and now, though laid, as 
it seems, utterly desolate, it can be revived by a 
few years of wisdom and of peace. 

Vol. I. Book III. Chap, xviii. — The Great 
Elector, Friedrich Wilhelm. Eleventh of the 
dynasty : — 

" There hardly ever came to sovereign power a 
young man of twenty under more distressing, 
hopeless-looking circumstances. Political signifi- 
cance Brandenburg had none ; a mere Protestant 
appendage, dragged about by a Papist Kaiser, His 
father's Prime Minister, as we have seen, was in 
the interest of his enemies ; not Brandenburg's 
servant, but Austria's. The very commandants 
of his fortresses, Commandant of Spandau more 
especially, refused to obey Friedrich Wilhelm on 
his accession ; ' were bound to obey the Kaiser in 
the first place.' 

" For twenty years past Brandenburg had been 
scoured by hostile armies, which, especially the 
Kaiser's part of which, committed outrages new 
in human history. In a year or two hence, Bran- 
denburg became again the theatre of business. 
Austrian Gallas advancing thither again (1644) 
with intent ' to shut up Torstenson and his Swedes 
in Jutland.' Gallas could by no means do what 
he intended ; on the contrary, he had to run from 
Torstenson — what feet could do ; was hunted, he 
and his Merode Briider (beautiful inventors of the 
'marauding' art), till they pretty much all died 
(crepirten) says Kohler. No great loss to society, 
the death of these artists, but we can fancy what 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 195 

their life, and especially what the process of 
their dying, may have cost poor Brandenburg 
again ! 

" Friedrich Wilhelm's aim, in this as in other 
emergencies, was sun-clear to himself, but for most 
part dim to everybody else. He had to walk very 
warily, Sweden on one hand of him, suspicious 
Kaiser on the other: he had to wear semblances, 
to be ready with evasive words, and advance 
noiselessly by many circuits. More delicate oper- 
ation could not be imagined. But advance he did ; 
advance and arrive. With extraordinary talent, 
diligence, and felicity the young man wound him- 
self out of this first fatal position, got those foreign 
armies pushed out of Ivis country, and kept them 
out. His first concern had been to find some ves- 
tige of revenue, to put that upon a clear footing, 
and by loans or otherwise to scrape a little ready- 
money together. On the strength of which a small 
body of soldiers could be collected about hi7?i, and 
drilled into real ability to fight and obey. This as 
a basis : on this followed all manner of things, 
freedom from Swedish-Austrian invasions, as the 
first thing. He was himself, as appeared by-and- 
by, a fighter of the first quality, when it came to 
that ; but never was willing to fight if he could 
help it. Preferred rather to shift, manoeuvre, and 
negotiate, which he did in most vigilant, adroit, 
and masterly manner. But by degrees he had 
grown to have, and could maintain it, an army of 
24,000 men, among the best troops then in being." 

To wear semblances, to be ready with evasive 



196 



APPENDIX. 



words, how is this, Mr. Carlyle ? thinks perhaps, 
the rightly thoughtful reader. 

Yes, such things have to be. There are lies and 
lies, and there are truths and truths. Ulysses can- 
not ride on the ram's back, like Phryxus ; but must 
ride under his belly. Read also this, presently- 
following : 

" Shortly after which, Friedrich Wilhelm, who 
had shone much in the battle of Warsaw, into 
which he was dragged against his will, changed 
sides. An inconsistent, treacherous man ? Per- 
haps not, O reader ! perhaps a many advancing 
'in circuits,' the only way he has; spirally, face 
now to east, now to west, with his own reasonable 
private aim sun-clear to him all the while? " 

The battle of Warsaw, three days long, fought 
with Gustavus, the grandfather of Charles XII. ^ 
against the Poles, virtually ends the Polish power : 

" Old Johann Casimir, not long after that peace 
of Oliva, getting tired of his unruly Polish chiv- 
alry and their ways, abdicated — retired to Paris, 
and ' lived much with Ninon de I'Enclos and her 
circle,' for the rest of his life. He used to com- 
plain of his Polish chivalry, that there was no 
solidity in them ; nothing but outside glitter, with 
tumult and anarchic noise; fatal want of one es- 
sential talent, the talent of obeying ; and has been 
heard to prophesy that a glorious Republic, per- 
sisting in such courses, would arrive at results 
which would surprise it. 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 197 

*' Onward from this time, Friedrich Wilhelm 
figures in the world; public men watching his pro- 
cedure ; kings anxious to secure him — Dutch 
print-sellers sticking up his portraits for a hero- 
worshipping public. Fighting hero, had the 
public known it, was not his essential character, 
though he had to fight a great deal. He was es- 
sentially an industrial man ; great in organizing, 
regulating, in constraining chaotic heaps to be- 
come cosmic for him. He drains bogs, settles 
colonies in the waste places of his dominions, cuts 
canals ; unweariedly encourages trade and work. 
The Friedrich Wilhelm's Canal, which still carries 
tonnage from the Oder to the Spree, is a monu- 
ment of his zeal in this way ; creditable with the 
means he had. To the poor French Protestants in 
the Edict -of- Nantes affair, he was like an express 
benefit of Heaven ; one helper appointed to whom 
the help itself was profitable. He munificently 
welcomed them to Brandenburg ; showed really a 
noble piety and human pity, as well as judgment ; 
nor did Brandenburg and he want their reward. 
Some 20,000 nimble French souls, evidently of the 
best French quality, found a home there ; made 
* waste sands about Berlin into potherb gardens ; ' 
and in spiritual Brandenburg, too, did something 
of horticulture which is still noticeable." 

Now read carefully the description of the ?nan,p. 
352 (224-5) J ^^^^ ^^^^y ^f i^^^ battle of Fehrbellin, 
^^ the Marathon of Brandenburg^''' p. 354(225); 
and of the winter campaign of 1679,/. 35^ (227), 



198 APPENDIX. 

begifining with its week' s inarches at sixty miles a 
day ; his wife as always , being with hi??t : 

''Louisa, honest and loving Dutch girl, aunt to 
our William of Orange, who trimmed up her own 
' Orange-burg ' (country-house), twenty miles 
north of Berlin, into a little jewel of the Dutch 
type, potherb gardens, training-schools for young 
girls, and the like, a favorite abode of hers when 
she was at liberty for recreation. But her life was 
busy and earnest ; she was helpmate, not in 
name only, to an ever busy man. They were 
married young ; a marriage of love withal. Young 
Friedrich Wilhelm's courtship ; wedding in Hol- 
land ; the honest, trustful walk and conversation 
of the two sovereign spouses, their journeyings to- 
gether, their mutual hopes, fears, and manifold 
vicissitudes, till death, with stern beauty, shut it 
in ; all is human, true, and wholesome in it, inter- 
esting to look upon, and rare among sovereign 
persons." 

Louisa died in 1667, twenty-one years before 
her husband, who married again — (little to his 
contentment) — died in 1688 ; and Louisa's second 
son, Friedrich, ten years old at his mother's death, 
and now therefore thirty-one, succeeds, becoming 
afterwards Friedrich L of Prussia. 

And here we pause on two great questions. 
Prussia is assuredly at this point a happier and 
better country than it was when inhabited by 
Wends. But is Friedrich L a happier and better 
man than Henry the Fowler? Have all these 



POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 199 

kings thus improved their country, but never 
themselves? Is this somewhat expensive and am- 
bitious Herr, Friedrich I., buttoned in diamonds, 
indeed the best that Protestantism can ])roduce, as 
against Fowlers, Bears, and Red Beards? Much 
more, Friedrich Wilhelm, orthodox on predestina- 
tion ; most of all, his less orthodox son ; — have 
we, in these, the highest results which Dr. Martin 
Luther can produce for the present, in the first 
circles of society? And if not, how is it that the 
country, having gained so much in intelligence and 
strength, lies more passively in their power than 
the baser country did under that of nobler men ? 
These, and collateral questions, I mean to work 
out as I can, with Carlyle's good help ; — but 
must pause for this time ; in doubt, as heretofore. 
Only of this one thing I doubt not, that the name 
of all great kings, set over Christian nations, must 
at last be, in fulfilment, the hereditary one of 
these German princes, *' Rich in Peace ;" and that 
their coronation will be with Wild olive, not with 
gold. 



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